Authors:
Tiago Antonio
and
Sergio Donizetti Zorzo
Affiliation:
Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil
Keyword(s):
Privacy, Mobile Social Networks, Rules of Privacy, Location-sharing.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Human Factors
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Physiological Computing Systems
Abstract:
Mobile social networks allow users to access, publish, and share information with friends, family, or groups of friends by using mobile devices. Location is one kind of information frequently shared. By using location-sharing on a social network, users allow service providers to register this information and use it to offer products and services based on the geographic area. Many users consider offers a personal gain, but for others, it causes concerns with security and privacy. These concerns can eliminate the use of mobile social networks. This paper presents a model of a mobile social network with a privacy guarantee. The model enables the user to set rules determining when, where, and with whom (friends or a group of friends) location information will be shared. Moreover, the model provides levels of privacy with anonymity techniques which hide the user’s high-accuracy current location before it is shared. To validate the model, a mobile social network prototype, MSNPrivacy (Mobi
le Social Network with Privacy), was developed for Android. Tests were carried out aiming to measure MSNPrivacy’s performance. The results verify that the rules and privacy levels in place provide an acceptable delay, and the model can be applied in real applications.
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