International Association
for Cryptologic Research

Ero Balsa
Privacy in online social networks: analysis and solutions
applications

Online social networks have revolutionized the way people communicate, meet, share information, and socialize both in their private and professional lives. Although these developments have brought unquestionable benefits to society, users are increasingly worried about the lack of control over their private information. The ease with which information is propagated over the Internet has led to a new reality where the acquisition of personal data is easier than never before. Solutions that provide users with the ability to benefit from social networking technologies while offering well-understood privacy properties have not yet been developed.\r\n

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\r\nTo better understand privacy risks in social networks I will develop methodologies to systematically analyze these risks by capturing information leakages in the various components of the system, including content as well as traffic data. This will involve defining models for user behavior, adversarial knowledge and capabilities, as well as metrics to quantify the degree to which privacy requirements are satisfied. Based on the understanding of how privacy breaches are enabled by information flows in social networ[...]