D-ISN: Understanding the New Online Advertisement Ecosystem and its Links to Human Trafficking and Other Organized Crime

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The objective of this Disrupting Operations of Illicit Supply Networks (D-ISN) project is to better understand the online adult advertisement ecosystem and its links to human trafficking and other organized crime in order to more effectively detect, disrupt, and dismantle existing illicit networks in this ecosystem. Since the closure of the dominant adult ad website, Backpage, many competing sites have emerged. Also, the prevalence of anonymous electronic payment methods has led to a significant increase in scam ads, which adds noise for identifying trafficked individuals. The fragmented marketplace, large volume of ad postings, and presence of scam ads have made monitoring efforts quite chaotic. Moreover, little is known about links between new adult ad sites, how they operate, and how the patterns that emerge in adult ad data correlate with other illicit activities. This project will determine methods to filter signal and noise in the ad data to inform law enforcement organizations (LEOs) and policy-makers operating in this new environment. Developing a deep understanding of how the sites work with the potential to uncover links to higher-level organized crime will provide a new foundation upon which researchers in diverse areas including operations research, cybersecurity, and the social sciences can use to study and disrupt human trafficking in the digital age.Using more than 100 million adult ads posted since 2020 from 14 sites, this research project has four research objectives: (1) understand the posting processes, monetization schemes, and the protection and defense mechanisms employed by prominent sites in the current online adult ad ecosystem; (2) develop multidisciplinary approaches for estimating ad legitimacy; (3) investigate techniques that legitimate posters use to evade law enforcement interdiction; and (4) Understand how multiplex network analysis (i.e., drugs, transportation) can contribute to improved accuracy for identifying potential trafficking activity. We collaborate with a regional human trafficking task force, which is composed of officers from several LEOs, and a non-profit organization that works to identify potential trafficking victims and connect them with resources to get out of “the life.” A diverse group of researchers, practitioners, and students will participate in this project. The research team will take deliberate efforts to recruit students from underrepresented groups for this project. Developed methods will be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate course materials for IS, OR, and Analytics programs. The outcomes of this project will be made publicly accessible and broadly distributed via publications, presentations, and workshops aimed at researchers, LEOs, and the general public.This project is jointly funded by the Disrupting Illicit Supply Networks (D-ISN) program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.