Log in

An investigation into the requirements of privacy in social networks and factors contributing to users’ concerns about violation of their privacy

  • Review Article
  • Published:
Social Network Analysis and Mining Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Social networks are specific types of social media which consolidate the ability of omnipresent connection for users and devices to share user-centric data objects among interested users. Taking advantage of the characteristics of both mobile social networks (MSNs) and online social networks (OSNs), MSNs are capable of providing an efficient and effective mobile environment for users to access, distribute, and share data. OSNs provide capability of search, data sharing, and online social interactions for users through Internet sites. However, the lack of a protective infrastructure in these networks has turned them into convenient targets for various risks. This is the main purpose why social networks including MSNs and OSNs carry disparate and intricate safety concerns specially privacy-preserving challenges and what has been done to improve these challenges. In addition, what types of data should be protected and what are the different architectures provided for each of these networks? In this paper, we aim to provide a clear categorization on privacy challenges and a deep exploration over some recent solutions in MSNs and OSNs. In particular, in MSNs, proposed scheme to protect data types is categorized, and in OSNs, all types of proposed architectures, along with the proposed mechanisms for privacy, are classified. To conclude, several major open research issues are discussed, and future research directions are outlined.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Germany)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abbas F, Rajput U, Wan J, Eun H, Oh H (2016) Say Hello Again: Privacy Preserving Matchmaking Using Cloud in Encounter Based Mobile Social Networks. In: Proceeding in: 16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing

  • Acquisti A, Gross R (2006) Imagined communities: Awareness, information sharing, and privacy on the Facebook. In: 6th Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, pp 36–58

  • Afifty Y (2008) Access control in a peer-to-peer social network. Master Thesis, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

  • Aiello ML, Ruffo G (2012) LotusNet:Tunable privacy for distributed online social network services. Elsevier J Comput Commun 35(1):75–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ardagna CA, Jajodia S, Samarati P, Stavrou A (2013) Providing users’ anonymity in mobile hybrid networks. ACM Trans Internet Technol 12(3):1–33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baden R, Bender A, Spring N, Bhattacharjee B, Starin D (2009) Persona: an online social network with user defined privacy, and scholarship. In: proceeding of ACM Conference on Special Interest Group On Data Communications (ACM SIGCOMM), pp 135–146

  • Barnes J (1954) Class and Committees in a Norwegian Island Parish. Human Relations

  • Beach A, Gartrell M, Han R (2009) Solutions to security and privacy issues in mobile social networking. In: Proc. Int. Conf. CSE, pp 1036–1042

  • Besmer A, Lipford H (2009) Tagged photos: concerns, perceptions, and protections. In: Proceedings of CHI2009 extended abstract, pp 4585–4590

  • Blum M (1983) How to exchange (secret) keys. ACM Trans Comput Syst 1(2):175–193

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd D, Ellison N (2007) Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. J Comput Mediat Commun 13(1): 210–230

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyd D, Hargittai E (2010) Facebook privacy settings: who cares? First Mond 15(8):479–500

    Google Scholar 

  • Buchegger S, Datta A (2009) A case for P2P infrastructure for social networks- opportunities & challengers. In: Proceeding of the 6th International Conference on Wireless On-Demand Network Systems and Services (WONS), pp 161–168

  • Buchegger S, Vu Lh, Datta A (2009) PeerSoN: P2P Social Networking Early Experiences and Insights. In: Proceedings of the Second ACM EuroSys Workshop on Social Network Systems, pp 46–52

  • Challal Y (2005) Group key management protocols: a novel taxonomy. Int J Inf Theory 2(2):105–118

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Chang W, Wu J, Tan C (2011) Friendship-based location privacy in mobile social networks. Int J Secur Netw 6(4):226–236

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chao S, Dongyu A (2013) Survey of location privacy. http://students.csci.unt.edu/da0097/

  • Chellappa RK, Sin R (2005) Personalization versus privacy: an empirical examination of the online consumer’s dilemma. Inf Technol Manag 6(2):181–202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cheng W, Aritsugi M (2014) A user sensitive privacy-preserving location sharing system in mobile social networks. Proc Proc Comput Sci 35:1692–1701

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chin A, Zhang D (eds) (2013) Mobile social networking an innovative approach. In: computational social sciences. Springer, New York, pp 112–113

  • Culnan MJ, Armstrong PK (1999) Information privacy concerns, procedural fairness, and impersonal trust: an empirical investigation. Organ Sci 10(1):104–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cutillo LA, Molva R, Strufe T (2009) Safebook: feasibility of transitive cooperation for privacy on a decentralized social network. In: Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks and Workshops (WoWMoM), Kos, Greece, pp 94–101

  • da Silva PM, Dias J (2017) Manuel RicardoMistrustful P2P: deterministic privacy-preserving P2P file sharing model to hide user content interests in untrusted peer-to-peer networks. Comput Netw. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2017.04.005

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Cristofaro E, Soriente C, Tsudik G, Williams A (2012) Hummingbird: privacy at the time of twitter. In: proceeding of IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp 285–299

  • De Capitani di vimercati S, Foresti S, Livraga G, Samarati P (2012) Data privacy: definitions and techniques. Int J Uncertain Fuzziness Knowl Based Syst 20(06): 793–817

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • De Montjoye YA, Hildalgo CA, Verleysen M, Blondel VD (2013) unique in the crowed: the privacy bounds of human mobility. Sci Rep. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01376

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DefrawyKEl,SolisJ, Tsudik G,“Leveraging social contacts for message confidentiality in delay tolerant networks. In: Proc. IEEECOMPSAC, 2009, pp. 271–279

  • Dinev T, Hart P (2004) Privacy concerns and Internet use—a model of trade-off factors. In: Paper read at Working Paper, Department of Information Technology and Operations Management at Florida Atlantic University

  • Ding X, Zhang L, Wan Zh, Gu M (2010) A brief survey on deanonmyzation attacks in online social networks: proceeding of International Conference on Computational Aspects Of Social Networks (CASoN), China 611–615

  • Dóra L, Holczer T (2010) Hide-and-Lie: Enhancing application-level privacy in opportunistic networks. In: Proc. MobiOpp, pp 135–142

  • Dramitinos M, Vannier R, Lassous IG 2009 A performance evaluation framework for fair solutions in ad hoc networks. In: Proc. ACM MSWiM, 2009, pp 46–53

  • Duckham M, Kulik L (2005) A formal model of obfuscation and negotiation for location privacy. In: Proc. Pervasive, pp 152–170

  • Dwyer C, Hiltz SR, Passerini K (2007).Trust and privacy concern within social networking sites: a comparison of Facebook and MySpace. In: Paper read at the Thirteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, at Keystone, Colorado

  • Ellison N, Steinfield C, Lampe C (2007) The benefits of facebook “Friends”: social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. J Comput Mediat Commun 12(4):1143–1168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • European Commission (2012a) The Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 review 2012 MEMO/12/41. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-releaseMEMO-12-41en.pdf

  • European Commission (2012b) The Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 review 2012 Regulation Council of the European Parliament. document/review2012/com. http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/2012_11_en.pdf

  • European Council (1995) Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of Individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. Official Journal of the European Communities, 23 November 1995, L 281/31, Available at. http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/privacy/docs/95-46-ce/dir1995-46_part1_en.pdf

  • Facebook Privacy Policy (2017) Facebook Privacy Policy (2017). April 2017 Available at http://facebook.com/policy.php. Accessed Apr 2017

  • Facebook statement of right and responsibilities (2017) acebook statement of right and responsibilities (2017) April 2017. Available athttp://facebook.com/terms.php. Accessed Apr 2017

  • Feng B, Deng RH, Wenbo M (1998) Efficient and practical fair exchange protocols with off-line TTP. In: Proc. IEEE Symp. Security Privacy, pp 77–85

  • Fogel J, Nehmad E (2009) Internet social network communities: Risk taking, trust, and privacy concerns. Comput Hum Behav 25(1):160–153

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fu Y, Wang Y, Peng W (2014) Common Finder: a decentralized and privacy-preserving common-friend measurement method for the distributed online social networks. Comput Netw 64:369–389. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2014.02.020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gedik B, Ling L (2008) Protecting location privacy with personalized k-anonymity: architecture and algorithms. IEEE Trans Mobile Comput 7(1):1–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert E, Karahalios K, Sandvig C (2008) The network in the garden: an empirical analysis of social media in rural life. In: Proceeding of CHI2008, pp 1603–1612

  • Goldie KR (2010) Aliases, cree**, and wall cleaning: understanding privacy in the age of Facebook. First Mond 15(1):1–4

    Google Scholar 

  • Gongjun Y, Olariu S, Weigle MC (2009) Providing location security in vehicular ad hoc networks. IEEE Wireless Commun 16(6):48–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Google pluse (2017) Google pluse Pages Additional Terms of Service (2017). April 2017 Available at https://www.google.com/intl/en/+/policy/pagesterm.html. Accessed Apr 2017

  • Google Privacy Policy (2017) https://www.google.com/intl/en/+/policies/privacy/. Accessed Apr 2017

  • Graf K, Gross Ch, Stingl D, Hartung D, Kovacevic A, Steinmetz R (2011) Life Social. KOM: a Secure and P2P-based solution for online social networks. In: Proceeding of the IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference (CCNC), pp 554–558

  • Gross R, Acquisti A (2005) Information revelation and privacy in online social networks. In: Paper read at the 2005 ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society

  • Gruteser M, Grunwald D (2003) Anonymous usage of location-based services through spatial and temporal cloaking. International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. 31–42

  • Guha S, Tang K, Francis PP (2008) NOYB: privacy in online social networks. In: First Workshop on Online Social Networks (WOSP’08), pp 210–230

  • Ho E, Lasch S, podolsky A, The Next Digital Divide: online Social Network Privacy. Center for study commercial Activities Research Report, 2008

  • Hui K-L, Teo HH, Lee S-YT (2007) The value of privacy assurance: an exploratory field experiment. Manag Inf Syst Q 31(1):19–33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jahid S, Mittal P, Borisov N (2011) EASiER: encryption-based access control in social networks with efficient revocation. In: Proceeding of the 6th ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, China, 411–415

  • Jahid S, Nilizadeh Sh, Mittal P, Borisov N, Kapadia A (2012) DECENT: a decentralized architecture for enforcing privacy in online social networks. In: Proceeding of the 4th IEEE International Workshop on Security and Social Networking, (SESOC’12),326–332

  • Joinson AN (2008)Looking at, looking up or kee** up with people?: motives and use of Facebook. In: Proceeding of CHI 2008, pp 1027–1036

  • Kaufman J, Christakis N, Lewis K (2008) The taste for privacy: An analysis of college student privacy settings in an online social network. J Comput Mediat Commun 14(1):79–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kayastha N, Niyato D, Wang P, Hossain E (2011) Applications, architectures, and protocol design issues for mobile social networks: a survey. In: Proc. IEEE, 99(12) 2130–2158

  • Krishnamurithy B, Wills EC (2008) Characterectizing Privacy in Social Networks. In: Proceedings of the First Workshop on Online Social Networks, pp 37–42

  • Lampe C, Ellison NB, Steinfield C (2008) Changes in use and perception of Facebook. In: Proceedings of SCW2008, 721–730

  • Lehikoinen JT, Olsson T, Toivola H (2008). Privacy regulation in online social interaction. In: Paper read at ICT, Society and Human Beings 2008

  • Li M, Ning C, Shucheng Y, Wen**g L (2011) FindU: privacy-preserving personal profile matching in mobile social networks. In: Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, pp 2435–2443

  • Liang X, Li X, Luan TH, Lu R, Lin X, Shen X (2012) Morality-driven data forwarding with privacy preservation in mobile social networks. IEEE Trans Veh Technol 61(7):3209–3222

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lucas MM, Borisov N (2008) Flybynight: mitigating the privacy risks of social networking. In: WPES 2008: Proceedings of the 7th ACM workshop on Privacy in the electronic society, ACM, New York, pp 1–8

  • Luo B, Lee D (2009) On protecting private information in social networks: a proposal. In: Proceeding of IEEE International-Conference on Data Engineering, pp 1603–1606

  • Luo W, **e Q, Hengartner U (2009) FaceCloak: architecture for user privacy on social networking sites. In: Proceeding of IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust (PASSAT-09), Canada, pp 26–33

  • Madden M, Smith A (2009) Reputation management and social media. Technical report, Pew Internet & American Life Project

  • Magkos E, Kotzanikolaou P, Sioutas S, Oikonomou K (2010) A distributed privacy-preserving scheme for location-based queries. In: Proc. IEEE WoWMoM 1–6

  • Malhotra NK, Kim SS, Agarwal J (2004). Internet users’ information privacy concerns (IUIPC): the construct, thescale, and a causal model. Inf Syst Res 15(4): 336–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mani M, Ngyuen AM, Crespi N (2009) What’s up: P2P spontaneous social networking. In: IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (pp 1–2). Galveston: TX, USA

  • Milne GR, Culnan MJ (2004) Strategies for reducing online privacy risks: why consumers read (or don’t read) online privacy notices. J Interact Mark 18(3):15–29

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mtibaa A, Harras KA, (2011) FOG: fairness in mobile opportunistic networking. In: Proc. IEEE SECON, 2011, pp 260–268

  • Najaflou Y, Jedari B, **a F (2013) Safety challenges and solutions in mobile social networks. IEEE Syst J 9(3):834–854. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSYST.2013.2284696

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Narendula R (2010)The case of decentralized online social networks. School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland. https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/174927/files/report.pdf

  • Narendula R, Papaioannou TG, Aberer K (2010a) Privacyaware and highly-available OSN profiles. In: Proc. WETICE

  • Narendula R, Papaioannou TG, Aberer K (2010b) Privacy-Aware and Highly-Available OSN Profiles. In: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises, pp 211–216

  • Narendula R, Papaioannou G, Aberer K (2011) My3: a highly-available P2P-based online social network. In: Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (IEEE P2P’11), (2011), pp. 166–167

  • Nov O, Wattal S (2009) Social computing privacy concerns: antecedents and effects. In: Proceedings of CHI2009, pp 333–336

  • Paine C, Reips U-D, Stieger S, Joinson A, Buchanan T (2007) Internet users’ perceptions of ‘privacy concerns’ and ‘privacy actions’. Int J Hum Comput Stud 65:526–536

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patsakis C, Zigomitros A, Papageorgiou A, Galván-López E (2014) Distributing privacy policies over multimedia content across multiple online social networks. Comput Netw 75:531–543. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2014.08.023

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phelps J, Nowak G, Ferrell E (2000) Privacy concerns and consumer willingness to provide personal information. J Public Policy Mark 19(1):27–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phelps JE, D’Souza G, Nowak GJ (2001) Antecedents and consequences of consumer privacy concerns: an empirical investigation. Journal of Interactive Marketing 15(4):2–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Qi X, Hengartner U (2011) Privacy-preserving matchmaking for mobile social networking secure against malicious users. In: Proc. PST, pp 252–259

  • Raji F, Davarpanah Jazi M, Miri A (2013) DEFF: a new architecture for private online social networks. Int J Secur Commun Netw 6:1460–1470. https://doi.org/10.1002/sec.533

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raji F, Davarpanah Jazi M, Miri A (2014) PESCA: a peer-to-peer social network architecture with privacy-enabled social communication and data availability. Int J IET Inf Secur. https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-ifs.2013.0256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schiberg D (2008) A peer-to-peer infrastructure for social networks. Disploma Thesis, Technical University Berlin, Germany

  • Schneier B (1996) Applied cryptography, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Shakimov A, Lim H, Caceress R, Cox P, Li K, Liu D, Varshavsky A (2011) Vis-vis: privacy-preserving online social networking via virtual individual servers. In: Proceeding of the 6th International Conference on Communication System and Networks (COMSNETS), pp 1–10

  • Sheehan KB, Hoy MG (1999) Flaming, complaining, abstaining: how online users respond to privacy concerns. J Advert 28(3):37–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skeels MM, Grudin J (2009) When social networks cross boundaries: a case study of workplace use of Facebook and LinkedIn. In: Proceedings of Group 2009, pp 95–104

  • Statista (2016) December 2016. Available at https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/socialnetworks/

  • Stutzman F, Kramer Duffield J (2010) Friends only: examining a privacy-enhancing behavior in facebook. In: Proceedings of CHI2010, pp 1553–1562

  • Sun J, Zhu X, Fang Y (2010) a privacy-preserving scheme for online social networks with efficient revocation. In: Procceding of the 29th of Information Communication (IEEE INFOCOM), pp 1–9

  • Tootoonchian A, Gollu K, Kiran S, Saroiu Y, Ganjali Y, Wolman A (2008) Lockr: Social Access Control for Web 2.0. In: Proceedings of the First ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks (WOSN)

  • Tootoonchian A, Saroiu S, Ganjali Y, Wolman A (2009) Lockr: better privacy for social networks. In: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies, Italy, pp 169–180

  • Tufekci Z (2008) Can you see me now? Audience and disclosure regulation in online social network sites. Bull Sci Technol Soc 28(1):20–36

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • UN Global Pulse (2015) Map** the risk-utility landscape: mobile data for sustainable development & humanitarian action. Global Pulse Project Series no. 18, 2015

  • Vastardis N, Yang K (2013) Mobile social networks: Architectures, social properties and key research challenges. IEEE Commun Surveys Tuts 15(3):1355–1371

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wang Y, Komanduri S, Giovanni Leon P (2011) I regretted the minute I pressed share: a Qualitative Study of Regrets on Facebook. In: Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), Pittsburgh, PA, USA

  • Wang Y, Hou J, **a Y, HZ (2015) efficient privacy preserving matchmaking for mobile social networking. Concurr Comput Pract Exp. https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.3284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wei C, Jie W, Tan CC (2011) Enhancing mobile social network privacy. In: IEEE GLOBECOM, pp 1–5

  • Wei W, Xu F, Li Q (2012) Mobishare: flexible privacy-preserving location sharing in mobile online social networks. In: IEEE INFOCOM, pp 2616–2620

  • Wu Y, Hui P, ** L (2015) Publish me and protect me: personalized and flexible location privacy protection in mobile social networks. In: IEEE International Symposium on Quality of Service, IWQoS 2015, Portland, OR, USA, pp 147–152

  • **ao X, Chen C, Sangaiah AK, Hu G, Ye R, Jiang Y (2017) CenLocShare: a centralized privacy-preserving location-sharing system for mobile online social networks. Future Gener Comput Syst. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2017.01.035

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • **aohui L, Xu L, Rongxing L, **aodong L, Xuemin S (2011) Finegrained identification with real-time fairness in mobile social networks. In: Proc. IEEE ICC, 2011, pp. 1–5

  • Xu H (2009) Consumer responses to the introduction of privacy protection measures: an exploratory research framework. Int J E-Bus Res 5(2):21–47 (Special issue on the Protection of Privacy in E-Business)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Xu H, Dinev T, Smith HJ, Hart P (2008) Examining the formation of individual’s information privacy concerns: toward an Integrative view. In: Paper read at 29th Annual International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), at Paris, France

  • Xu F, Michael K, Chen X (2013) Factors affecting privacy disclosure on social network sites: an integrated model. Electron Commer Res 13:151–168. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-013-9111-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yang S, Wang K (2009) The influence of information sensitivity compensation on privacy concern and behavioral intention. Data Base Adv Inf Syst 40(1):38–51

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ye A, Chen Q, Xu L, Wu W (2016) The flexible and privacy-preserving proximity detection in mobile social network. Future Gener Comput Syst. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2016.12.012

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu Y, Hu Z, Wang H, Hu H, Ahn GJ (2010) A Collaborative framework for privacy protection in online social networks. In: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Collaborative Computing, USA, pp 40–45

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mehdi Hosseinzadeh.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Malekhosseini, R., Hosseinzadeh, M. & Navi, K. An investigation into the requirements of privacy in social networks and factors contributing to users’ concerns about violation of their privacy. Soc. Netw. Anal. Min. 8, 41 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-018-0518-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-018-0518-x

Keywords

Navigation