System and method for usage-based misinformation detection and response

1 . A method of detecting, and providing a notification of, the existence of misinformation using usage patterns of a network service, the method comprising:

establishing common usage patterns of the network service;

identifying an irregular usage pattern;

determining that the irregular usage pattern was caused by misinformation; and

responding to the misinformation.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining the source of the misinformation.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein responding to the misinformation comprises one or more of:

modifying the network service to accommodate misinformation;

asking the source of misinformation for correction or retraction;

providing results for searches regarding misinformation;

posting an entry in an online discussion forum explaining the misinformation; or

notifying a group responsible for public relations, CRM, or product branding of misinformation so that the group can react.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the usage patterns comprises known pulses and idle time, known content, and max, min, average and mean usage levels.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein misinformation comprises a false quote, a false fact, or a false URL.

6 . A method of detecting abnormal use of a network service caused by misinformation, comprising:

determining common usage patterns for the network service;

monitoring the usage patterns of service to detect abnormal usage patterns; and

determining if the abnormal usage patterns were caused by misinformation.

7 . The method of claim 6 , wherein abnormal usage comprises requests for a non-existent URL.

8 . The method of claim 6 , wherein abnormal usage comprises a large number of searches within the network service, which do not match any of the network service's data.

9 . The method of claim 6 , wherein monitoring the usage patterns of service to detect abnormal usage patterns is manually performed.

10 . The method of claim 6 , wherein different users monitor different aspects of the network service.

11 . The method of claim 6 , wherein an automatic misinformation recognition agent requests an authorized user to determine if a given abnormal usage pattern was caused by misinformation.

12 . The method of claim 6 , wherein an automatic misinformation response agent requests that an authorized human determine how to handle a given misinformation incident.

13 . The method of claim 6 , wherein specific third party services are checked for usage indicating misinformation.

14 . The method of claim 6 , wherein activities of a specific user are checked for behavior indicating misinformation.

15 . The method of claim 6 , wherein determining if the abnormal usage patterns were caused by misinformation comprises checking for correlations between specific activity and patterns of activity to reveal misinformation.

16 . The method of claim 15 , wherein correlations comprise one or more of:

actions of a particular user;

numerous searches for a particular topic;

searches that fail to return any results;

action level or content in a third party service;

reduced or low levels of one or more activities; or

hits from a particular source.

17 . The method of claim 6 , wherein the network service comprises one or more online servers.

18 . A system for detecting, and providing a notification of, the existence of misinformation using usage patterns of a network service, comprising:

means for establishing common usage patterns of the network service;

means for identifying an irregular usage pattern;

means for determining that the irregular usage pattern was caused by misinformation; and

means for responding to the misinformation.

19 . A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for detecting, and providing a notification of, the existence of misinformation using usage patterns of a network service, comprising:

establishing common usage patterns of the network service;

identifying an irregular usage pattern;

determining that the irregular usage pattern was caused by misinformation; and

responding to the misinformation.