The key feature of online social networks (OSN) is the ability of users to become active, make friends and interact via comments, videos or messages with those around them. This social interaction is typically perceived as critical to the proper functioning of these platforms; therefore, a significant share of OSN research in the recent past has investigated the characteristics and importance o...

The popularity and widespread usage of online social networks (OSN) have attracted cyber criminals who have used OSNs as a platform to spread malware. Among different types of malware in OSNs, Trojan is the most popular type with hundreds of attacks on OSN users in the past few years. Trojans infecting a user’s computer have the ability to steal confidential information, install ransomware and ...

of the Dissertation Online Social Network Measurements and Search Privacy Protection This dissertation investigates the following issues within the context of online social networks (OSNs). • How to collect data from OSNs; • How to estimate OSN properties; • How to measure OSN behavior. First a case study is conducted with real OSN data to analyze the data collection process. The following prob...

In this paper, we present the design, implementation and our year-long maintenance experience of SNSAPI, a Python-based middleware which unifies the interfaces and data structures of heterogeneous Social Networking Services (SNS). Unlike most prior works, our middleware is user-oriented and requires zero infrastructure support. It enables a user to readily conduct online social activities in a ...

Der Beitrag skizziert aus Entwurfsperspektive ein automatisiertes agentenbasiertes Headhunting-System für Online Social Networks (OSN). Dabei werden neben der grundsätzlichen Projektidee makround mikroökonomische Modellierungsaspekte des Headhunting-Systems beleuchtet. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass deliberative intelligente Softwareagenten prinzipiell geeignet sind, Headhunting-Aktivitäten im Be...

Online Social Networks (OSNs) encourage users to create an online presence that reflects their offline identity. OSNs create the illusion that these online accounts correspond to the correct offline person, but in reality the OSN lacks the resources to detect impersonation. We propose that OSN users identify each other based on interaction and experience. We believe that impersonation can be th...

Today’s online social network platforms like Facebook have become store houses of unprecedented amount of personal sensitive information. Thanks to their cumbersome privacy policies and lack of tools to independently audit the data accesses, such systems became a black box for a privacy conscious user. Users feel lack of control on their data. Distributed online social networks (OSNs) where use...

Web crawlers are complex applications that explore the Web with different purposes. Web crawlers can be configured to crawl online social networks (OSN) to obtain relevant data about its global structure. Before a web crawler can be launched to explore the web, a large amount of settings have to be configured. This settings define the behavior of the crawler and have a big impact on the collect...

Since 1950, information flows have been in the centre of scientific research. Up until internet penetration in the late 90s, these studies were based over traditional offline social networks. Several observations in “offline” information flows studies, such as two-step flow of communication and the importance of weak ties, were verified in several “online” studies, showing that the diffused inf...

A dimension of the Internet that has gained great popularity in recent years is the platform of online social networks (OSNs). Users all over the world write, share, and publish personal information about themselves, their friends, and their workplaces within this platform of communication. In this study we demonstrate the relative ease of creating malicious socialbots that act as social networ...