HideMe: Privacy-Preserving Photo Sharing on Social Networks

Abstract

Photo sharing on Online Social Networks (OSNs) has become one of the most popular social activities in our daily life. However, some associated friends or bystanders in the photos may not want to be viewed due to privacy concerns. In this paper, we propose the design, implementation and evaluation of HideMe, a framework to preserve the associated users’ privacy for online photo sharing. HideMe acts as a plugin to existing photo sharing OSNs, and it enables the following: a) extraction of factors when users upload their photos, b) associated friends in the uploaded photos are able to set their own privacy policies based on scenarios, instead of a photo-by-photo setting, c) any user in other friend’s uploaded photos could be hidden away from unwanted viewers based on one time policy generation. We also design a distance-based algorithm to identify and protect the privacy of bystanders. Moreover, HideMe not only protects users’ privacy but also reduces the system overhead by a carefully designed face matching algorithm. We have implemented a prototype of HideMe, and evaluation results have demonstrated its effectiveness and efficiency.