Data-based access control for social networks

Thesis Overview

<p> </p><div><p>Introduction</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>1.1 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Background Information</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>A social networking website is an online platform that allows users to create a public pro le and interact with other users on the website. The rst social net-working site SixDegrees.com was launched in 1997 [1]. Six Degrees allowed users to create pro les, list and message their friends and traverse friend’s listings, thus tting the de nition above. Even though there were millions of users, users did not have many direct friends and Six Degrees did not o er much functionality besides messaging. The website nally shut down in 2000 [1]. During and after this period other websites started adding Online Social Networks (OSN) features to their existing content, essentially becoming OSNs, with various degrees of suc-cess. In the years that followed, new OSNs started from scratch and began to o er functionality beyond simply listing and browsing friends.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn are among most popular social net-working sites according to tra c rank. The main goal of online social network site is to make available an information space, where each social network participant can publish and share information as well as meet other people for a variety of purposes.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>When registering to a social network, the user will be given an account and a pro le, where he or she is able to modify personal information, specify relation-ships with other users and even manage personal resourses, such as comments and photos. So there is a need to protect sensitive information from unauthorized people. The traditional access control implemented in social networks is based on the relationship between each user. A member from a social network can decide which personal information is accessible by marking a given item as public or pri-vate. Although this approach has the advantage of being easy to implement, lacks exibility. The relationship settings do not allow users to specify their own access control requirements, which might lead to a too loose or too restrictive access control policy [2]. Moreover, social networks store information remotely, rather than on a user’s personal computer. This means the privacy policy may change at any time without a user’s permission.</p><p></p></div><h3></h3><br> <br><p></p>