Driven by advancements in Web-based information technologies and increasing globalization, computer-mediated communication continues to filter into everyday life, bringing with it new venues for deception. The volume of text-based chat, instant messaging, text messaging, and text generated by online communities of practice is increasing rapidly. Even e-mail continues to grow in use. With the massive growth of text-based communication, the potential for people to deceive others through computer- mediated communication has also grown, and such deception can have disastrous results. Unfortunately, in general, humans tend to perform poorly at deception-detection tasks. This phenomenon is exacerbated in text-based communications. A large part of the research on deception detection (also known as credibility assessment) has involved face-to-face meetings and interviews. Yet, with the growth of text-based communication, text based deception-detection techniques are essential.

Questions for Discussion
1. Why is it difficult to detect deception?
2. How can text/data mining be used to detect deception in text?
3. What do you think are the main challenges for such an automated system?