Stylometric identification in electronic markets: Scalability and robustness

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

39 Scopus citations

Abstract

Online reputation systems are intended to facilitate the propagation of word of mouth as a credibility scoring mechanism for improved trust in electronic marketplaces. However, they experience two problems attributable to anonymity abuse - easy identity changes and reputation manipulation. In this study, we propose the use of stylometric analysis to help identify online traders based on the writing style traces inherent in their posted feedback comments. We incorporated a rich stylistic feature set and developed the Writeprint technique for detection of anonymous trader identities. The technique and extended feature set were evaluated on a test bed encompassing thousands of feedback comments posted by 200 eBay traders. Experiments conducted to assess the scalability (number of traders) and robustness (against intentional obfuscation) of the proposed approach found it to significantly outperform benchmark stylometric techniques. The results indicate that the proposed method in~y help militate against easy identity changes and reputation manipulation in electronic markets.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)49-78
Number of pages30
JournalJournal of Management Information Systems
Volume25
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2008

Keywords

  • Anti-aliasing
  • Electronic markets
  • Online trust
  • Similarity detection
  • Stylometry

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Management Information Systems
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Management Science and Operations Research
  • Information Systems and Management

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