Internet forums: a source of intelligence to monitor the online diffusion of doping products

Thomas Pineau, Adrien Schopfer, Lionel Grossrieder, Julian Broséus, Pierre Esseiva & Quentin Rossy

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Introduction

Aims: Assessing the doping product market– Detection of products and suppliers and popularity analysis – Trends analysis

To settle monitoring and digital evidence collection strategies

Selected means: Community forums analysis– Open-source, structured and huge amount of data– “Safe” space to share information

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Ethical consideration

Accordance with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP)

Data sources are publicly accessible online (without any step of registration or any kind of protection)

No sensitive personal data

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Methodology (OSINT)

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1. Source Code extraction of Forums

Popularity indicator:numberofauthorspostingasubject

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2. Words extraction from topic subjects

Example:{prop; tren; masteron; eq; cycle; eq; question}

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Methodology

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3. Filtering relevant words4. Words description

- Establishment of a reference file

Methodology

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Reference file, example:

Methodology

Words Class Category Name Active substancesus250 product steroid sustanon testosterone

sustanon product steroid sustanon testosteronesus product steroid sustanon testosterone

cyctahoh product steroid sustanon testosterone

Collected data

13 forums

~1’000’000 topics analysed since 2001

1757 relevant words identified as:158 active substances320 doping products

327 suppliers

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Products popularity

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Main types of temporal trends Sample of the 158 actives substances

Chronic DownwardUpward Temporary

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Supplier detection and popularity N = 327 suppliers

RUI-Products(ar-r),11years

Ttokkyolaboratories,11years

BritishDragon,14years

Denkall,14years Generic labs,14years

Organon,14yearsNormaHellas,12years

BlackCatLab,14years

SciroxxLaboratories,7yearsGeneza pharmaceuticals,7years

Axiolabs,8years

AG-Guys,11years

DesmaZambon,12yearsgalenika,14years

OrbitNutrition,12years

BalkanPharmaceutical,8years

Eurokinggear,5years

SydGroup,12years

PinnacleLabs,13years

hardcorelabs,14years

0

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0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

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Num

bero

fsup

pliers

Observationtime[years]

Mostpopular suppliers Authors Forums Observation timeRUI-Products (ar-r) 1131 10 11Ttokkyo Laboratories 733 7 11

BritishDragon 602 13 14Denkall 420 7 14

Genericlabs 405 11 14Organon 389 12 14

NormaHellas 333 11 12BlackCatLab 286 12 14

Sciroxx Laboratories 230 12 7Geneza Pharmaceuticals 195 12 7

Axiolabs 189 11 8AG-Guys 184 9 11

DesmaZambon 181 7 12Galenika 177 10 14

Orbit Nutrition 168 8 12BalkanPharmaceutical 162 13 8

Euroking gear 161 10 5Syd Group 159 9 12

Pinnacle Labs 158 9 13Hardcorelabs 152 10 14

Number offorums

Numbero

fautho

rs

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ConclusionDynamic adaptation of the collection plan based on discussions of users/suppliers

ü Structured approach to identify relevant keywordsü Trends analysis: popularityü Emerging products detection

ü Suppliers detectionü Promotional strategiesü Popularityü Seller’s websites detection

The methodology can be widely applied to other types of crime problems

1230 March 2016