Privacy inference analysis on event-based social networks

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive study of privacy threats by bridging user’s online and offline social activities.We adopt the recently emerged Event-Based Social Networks (EBSNs) such as Meetup as an example. Due to the intrinsic interrelated nature of users’ online and offline social activities, our research revealed that using several simple yet effective privacy inference models, user’s privacy of online group membership and offline event attendance can be inferred with high accuracy. The level of privacy threats by bridging user’s online and offline social activities is remarkably severe.