Online Social Networks: Privacy Threats and Defenses

Abstract

With over 1 billion users connected through online social networks, user privacy is becoming ever more important and is widely discussed in the media and researched in academia. In this chapter we provide a brief overview of some threats to users’ privacy. We classify these threats as: users’ limitations, design flaws and limitations, implicit flows of information, and clash of incentives. We also discuss two defense mechanisms which deploy usable privacy through a visual and interactive flow of information and a rational privacy vulnerability scanner.