Security and Privacy in Online Social Networks

An Online Social Network (OSN) offering, usually centralized, online accessible SNS contain digital representations of a subset of the relations that their users, both registered persons and institutions, entertain in the physical world. Spanning all participants through their relationships, they model the social network as a graph. Every OSN user can typically create his or her own OSN profile and use the available OSN applications to easily share information with other, possibly selected, users for either professional, or personal purposes. OSN with a more professional and business-oriented background are typically used as a facility geared towards career management or business contacts; such networks typically provide SNS with a more serious image. In contrast, OSN with a more private and leisure-oriented background are typically used for sharing and exchanging more personal information, like, e.g., contact data, photographs, and videos; OSN provided by such networks have usually a more youthful interface. The core OSN application is the creation and maintenance of contact lists.