Information revelation and privacy in online social networks

TLDR

Social networking sites have grown rapidly, allowing millions to create profiles and share personal data with friends and often unknown strangers. This study investigates how users reveal information on social networks and the resulting privacy risks. The authors examined the online activity of over 4,000 Carnegie Mellon students on a college‑focused social network, measuring disclosed data and privacy‑setting usage. They found that users are vulnerable to privacy attacks and that only a small fraction adjust restrictive privacy settings.

Abstract

Participation in social networking sites has dramatically increased in recent years. Services such as Friendster, Tribe, or the Facebook allow millions of individuals to create online profiles and share personal information with vast networks of friends - and, often, unknown numbers of strangers. In this paper we study patterns of information revelation in online social networks and their privacy implications. We analyze the online behavior of more than 4,000 Carnegie Mellon University students who have joined a popular social networking site catered to colleges. We evaluate the amount of information they disclose and study their usage of the site's privacy settings. We highlight potential attacks on various aspects of their privacy, and we show that only a minimal percentage of users changes the highly permeable privacy preferences.