Graph-Based User Behavior Modeling: From Prediction to Fraud Detection

How can we model users' preferences? How do anomalies, fraud, and spam effect our models of normal users? How can we modify our models to catch fraudsters? In this tutorial we will answer these questions - connecting graph analysis tools for user behavior modeling to anomaly and fraud detection. In particular, we will focus on the application of subgraph analysis, label propagation, and latent factor models to static, evolving, and attributed graphs. For each of these techniques we will give a brief explanation of the algorithms and the intuition behind them. We will then give examples of recent research using the techniques to model, understand and predict normal behavior. With this intuition for how these methods are applied to graphs and user behavior, we will focus on state-of-the-art research showing how the outcomes of these methods are effected by fraud, and how they have been used to catch fraudsters.