Social Applications: A Privacy Challenge for Online Social Networks

Abstract

Social networking sites are one of the most popular internet sites today. This is due to dramatic increase in the number of social networks users, which reached the 600 million users on Facebook alone as of March 2011. With introduction of the social networking platforms, third party developers are able to launch their own applications for existing massive user base. These applications can access user’s profile data to operate properly. This fact poses serious privacy risks because current social networking platforms don’t provide any mechanism to control disclosure of user’s personal information to social applications and their developers. In this paper, we analyze usage pattern and growth rate of social applications. We present results of a research survey which was conducted at higher education institution. The results clearly demonstrate unawareness of user about privacy implications of using social applications. We also point out inherit flaws in existing social networking platforms. We recognize the need for extension of current social networking APIs so that these provide fine grain access control to the user of online social networks