Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Social Network Analysis and Mining (2019) 9:35 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-019-0582-x REVIEW ARTICLE A survey on detecting spam accounts on Twitter network Oğuzhan Çıtlak 1  · Murat Dörterler 1  · İbrahim Alper Doğru 1 Received: 6 August 2018 / Revised: 20 May 2019 / Accepted: 15 July 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Austria, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Social networks have become an inseparable part of our lives today. Services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google + and LinkedIn in particular have had a signifcant place in Internet use in recent years. People establish instant interactions between each other over the Internet using these social services. They get many advantages such as creating their own groups, being informed about diferent interest areas and being able to make many contacts. Twitter is one of the mostly used platforms among the social networks. A social network that is being used so commonly has become a target for the vicious people (spammers). There is an increase in the number of spammers on Twitter too. Malicious content and messages (spams) prepared by the spammers do threat the security as well as performance. The frst and most important condition to protect against this threat is to know the harmful methods of spam. Thus, this will make it easier to detect and protect. In this study, prominent detection methods of spams are analyzed. How the real users and fake users are distinguished as well as weak and strong aspects of the methods for these processes are compared and evaluated. Keywords Social network · Spam accounts · Spam detection on Twitter · Spam analysis on Twitter 1 Introduction Today, people are able to use the Internet widely regard- less of time and space. For Internet users, social networks have become areas where people spend most of their time. These social platforms, where individuals can express them- selves easily and share information, have, too become an indispensable part of everyday life (Erdoğan and Bahtiyar 2014). Today, when the Internet has entered our lives com- pletely, the use of social media has increased considerably and all people have reached the possibility of communicat- ing with a person in a globalizing world. Statistics show that the average usage rate of social networks has exceeded the usage rates of other sites (Stringhini et al. 2010). Individu- als’ purpose of using social media changes from one person to another. The expectations of each individual from social media tools are diferent, which can lead to diferent uses as well. While, for some users, social media is a medium on which individuals could escape from socializing, be alone and where they are more like an audience, for others it can emerge as a medium that they can socialize, be appreciated within the community and followed up, and express them- selves comfortably. From this point of view, social media is defned as a structure built on technology that enables a deep social interaction, group formation and cooperation (Akar 2010). The fact that people prefer the use of technol- ogy instead of face-to-face communication in human rela- tionships has caused social media to be used in every feld. The fact that social media has begun to be efectively used in the education of the individuals (Öztürk and Talas 2015). How these messages and the sharing they make and emo- tions refected can be used to predict the outcomes in the real world (Stephen and Galak 2012), and even the use of these emotions, thoughts and behaviors therein in diferent areas such as determining the value of the reputation of the individual in the real world is the greatest indication of this (Peleja et al. 2014). In a study by Hacıefendioğlu (2011), social networks are often used as an advertising medium, while shared advertisements are viewed by users of social media at a rate of 75.8%, and 59.2% of users ofer the prod- ucts in advertising to other users. In Table 1, the increase in the number of internet users from January 2015 to January 2016 and the increase in the number of social media usage and the number of mobile device users and the increase in * Oğuzhan Çıtlak oguzhan.citlak@gazi.edu.tr 1 Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Gazi University, Teknikokullar, Ankara, Turkey