Privacy Analysis on Microblogging Online Social Networks

Abstract

Online Social Networks (OSNs) incorporate different forms of interactive communication, including microblogging services, multimedia sharing, business networking, and so on. They allow users to create profiles, connect with friends, and share their daily activities and thoughts. However, this ease of use of OSNs comes with a cost in terms of users’ privacy and security. The big amount of personal data shared in the users’ profiles or correlated from their activities can be stored, processed, and sold for advertisement or statistical purposes. It attracts also malicious users who can collect and exploit the data and target different types of attacks. In this article, we review the state of the art of OSNs existing either in the literature or deployed for use. We focus on the OSN systems that offer, but not exclusively, microblogging services. We analyze and evaluate each system based on a set of characteristics, and we compare them based on their usability and the level of protection of privacy and security they provide. This study is a first step toward understanding the security and privacy controls and measuring their level in an OSN.