Mintal and Co-Authors Map Slovak Untrustworthy Website Networks

CMDS Fellow Jozef Mihal Mintal and co-authors Michal Kalman and Karol Fabián provide a first-of-its-kind mapping of Slovak untrustworthy website networks as well as a reliable open-source tool to uncover such networks in a paper presented at MISDOOM 2021.

The tool is based on the utilization of Google Analytics/AdSense IDs, with the added ability to expose networks based on historical data. The study, Hide and Seek in Slovakia: Utilizing Tracking Code Data to Uncover Untrustworthy Website Networks, succeeds in exposing multiple novel website ties.

At the same time, the findings indicate that while some untrustworthy website networks have been found to operate in the Slovak infosphere, most researched websites appear to be run by multiple mutually unconnected administrators. The resulting data also demonstrates that untrustworthy Slovak websites display a high content diversity in terms of connected websites, ranging from websites of local NGOs, an e-shop selling underwear to a matchmaking portal.