Characterizing Privacy in Online Social Networks

Online Social Networks (OSNs) with half a billion users have dramatically raised concerns on privacy leakage. Users, often willingly, share personal identifying information about themselves, but do not have a clear idea of who accesses their private information or what portion of it really needs to be accessed. In this paper the authors examine popular OSNs from a viewpoint of characterizing potential privacy leakage. The paper identifies what bits of information are currently being shared, how widely, and what users can do to prevent such sharing. They also examine the role of third-party sites that track OSN users and compare with privacy leakage on popular traditional Web sites.