Abusive traffic detection

Abstract

Aspects of an abuse detection system for a web service include an abuse detection engine executing on a server. The abuse detection engine includes a pre-processing module for aggregating a data set for processing and analysis; a suspiciousness test module for identifying suspicious content owners and suspicious users; a graphing module for finding connections between suspicious content owners and suspicious users; an analysis module for determining which groups are constituted of fraudulent or abusive accounts; and a notification generation and output module for generating a list of abusive entities and a notification for output to at least one of: the abusive entity, a digital content distribution company associated with the abusive entity, and a legal department or other entity for further investigation or action. Additionally, royalties for content consumptions associated with abusive accounts may be held. Aspects of an abusive traffic detection method enable multi-account and multi-content owner fraud detection.