Abstract. A growing concern for end users of Online Social Networks (OSNs) is the privacy and control of user data due to the client-server architecture of the current ecosystems. In this paper, we introduce a privacy preserving decentralized OSN platform, which mimics real life social interactions. In particular, we decentralize the OSN platform and give direct control of the information to the user. The distributed platform removes central authorities from the OSN and users share their content only with intended peers through mobile devices. This decentralized system ensures that interaction happens between friends and third parties cannot access the user content or relationships. To be able to efficiently share objects and provide timely access in the POSN platform, we take advantage of free storage clouds to distribute encrypted user content. The combination of phone-to-phone applications with cloud infrastructure would address the availability limitation of peer-to-peer systems, while enjoying the benefits of peer-to-peer systems, such as no central authority and scalability.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.