Privacy in Online Social Networking Sites

Abstract

There are more than 192 active social networking websites. Bringing every kind of social group together in one place and letting them interact is really a big thing indeed .Huge amount of information process in the sites each day, end up making it vulnerable to attack. There is no systematic framework taking into account the importance of privacy. Increased privacy settings don’t always guarantee privacy when there is a loop hole in the applications. Lack of user education results is over sharing. Privacy settings to limit access to some data are available, but these settings are never the default. Only a tiny minority make use of these. Online social network does not provide any demarcation line between private and public information. The personal information shared in online social networks can harm the user in often unexpected ways. Private data is available in plenty. The major privacy problems are due to complicated privacy model, implementation errors and economic pressure. Until recently, not much work was done in this area. The recent papers, which I have collected is a Testimony to state that lot of work needs to be done in this area.