Data fraud detection: A first general perspective

Abstract

We try to present a first broad overview on data fraud, and give hints to data fraud detection (DFD). Especially, we show examples of data fraud that happened at anytime of human mankind, all around the world, and affects all kind of human activities. For instance, betrayers are entities of the society, industry, banks, services, health-care, non-profit organizations, art, science, media or even a government or the Vatican. We consider four main areas of data fraud: spy out, plagiarism, manipulation and fabrication of data. Of course, there is not only interest on data fraud itself but on its detection, too. Although improvements of data fraud detection is evident, it seems that the intellectual creativity and capacity of the betrayers is unlimited. Especially, the Internet with its various services and the mobile communication opened the Pandora box for criminal acts. Furthermore, one may state the hypothesis that while the ethics behavior of people decreases over time the data fraud rate is continuously increasing. There does not exist an omnibus data fraud detector, and the author supposes there will be never one upcoming due to the heterogeneity of the domain. For instance, compare the domains“spy out” in industry and“data fabrication” of observational or experimental studies in science. It is a matter of fact that the interest and need of science, business and governmental authorities is increasing over time for improving tests of data fraud detection. This paper can be viewed as a modest attempt for stimulating research into this direction.