  We are living in an era when online communication over social network
services (SNSs) have become an indispensable part of people's everyday lives.
As a consequence, online social deception (OSD) in SNSs has emerged as a
serious threat in cyberspace, particularly for users vulnerable to such
cyberattacks. Cyber attackers have exploited the sophisticated features of SNSs
to carry out harmful OSD activities, such as financial fraud, privacy threat,
or sexual/labor exploitation. Therefore, it is critical to understand OSD and
develop effective countermeasures against OSD for building a trustworthy SNSs.
In this paper, we conducted an extensive survey, covering (i) the
multidisciplinary concepts of social deception; (ii) types of OSD attacks and
their unique characteristics compared to other social network attacks and
cybercrimes; (iii) comprehensive defense mechanisms embracing prevention,
detection, and response (or mitigation) against OSD attacks along with their
pros and cons; (iv) datasets/metrics used for validation and verification; and
(v) legal and ethical concerns related to OSD research. Based on this survey,
we provide insights into the effectiveness of countermeasures and the lessons
from existing literature. We conclude this survey paper with an in-depth
discussions on the limitations of the state-of-the-art and recommend future
research directions in this area.
