Phys. Rev. E 66, 035103(R) (2002) [4 pages]

Scale-free topology of e-mail networks

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Holger Ebel^*, Lutz-Ingo Mielsch, and Stefan Bornholdt^†
Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Kiel, Leibnizstraße 15, D-24098 Kiel, Germany

Received 12 February 2002; published 30 September 2002

We study the topology of e-mail networks with e-mail addresses as nodes and e-mails as links using data from server log files. The resulting network exhibits a scale-free link distribution and pronounced small-world behavior, as observed in other social networks. These observations imply that the spreading of e-mail viruses is greatly facilitated in real e-mail networks compared to random architectures.

URL:

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.66.035103

DOI:

10.1103/PhysRevE.66.035103

PACS:

89.75.Hc, 89.20.Hh, 05.65.+b

^*Corresponding author. Electronic address: ebel@theo-physik.uni-kiel.de

^†Present address: Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Bioinformatik, Universität Leipzig, Kreuzstraße 7b, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: bornholdt@izbi.uni-leipzig.de

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Phys. Rev. E 66, 035103(R) (2002) [4 pages]

Scale-free topology of e-mail networks