Privacy analysis in mobile social networks: the influential factors for disclosure of personal data

Abstract

Nowadays, mobile social networks are capable of promoting social networking benefits during physical meetings, in order to leverage interpersonal affinities not only among acquaintances, but also between strangers. Due to their foundation on automated sharing of personal data in the physical surroundings of the user, these networks are subject to crucial privacy threats. Privacy management systems must be capable of accurate selection of data disclosure according to human data sensitivity evaluation. Therefore, it is crucial to research and comprehend individual's personal information disclosure decisions happening in ordinary human communication. Consequently, in this paper we provide insight into influential factors of human data disclosure decisions, by presenting and analyzing results of an empirical investigation comprising of two online surveys. We focus on the following influential factors: inquirer, purpose of disclosure, access & control of the disclosed information, location familiarity and current activity of the user. This research can serve as relevant input for the design of privacy management models in mobile social networks.

The influential factors for the variation of data sensitivity in ubiquitous social networking

“…All the aforementioned studies, even if acknowledging the existence of other relevant influential factors, commonly indicated the identity of the inquirer as the most crucial determinant for data disclosure in ubiquitous computing environments. On the contrary, in (Sapuppo, 2012a) the author advanced the attention to analysis of other influential factors for data disclosure, due to specific focus on USN and consequent initialization of relationships between strangers. The findings strongly encourage privacy designers of USN to take into account the purpose of data disclosure factor as the primary index for decisions about data disclosure to strangers.…”

“…Further, it also suggests to consider other influential factors for the disclosure of personal information, however as indexes of secondary importance, i.e. familiarity with the current location, current activity and other information about inquirer, such as the number of previous encounters and mutual friends (Sapuppo, 2012a). The mutual friends influential factor was also confirmed to significantly impact personal data disclosure decisions in online social networks, where users were proven to be much more likely to disclose sensitive information to strangers if they have a friend in common (Nagle and Singh, 2009).…”

“…The mixed methods study, presented in this paper, is based on the findings of the past work, discussed in this section. Especially, the results presented in this article target at complementing the outcomes of the empirical analysis in USN, described in (Sapuppo, 2012a). However, differently from (Sapuppo, 2012a), in this investigation we focus on analyzing ad hoc data disclosure decisions, which were proven to be more accurate for preserving users' data privacy in USN (Jendricke et al, 2002;Bünnig, 2009b,a;Bünnig and Cap, 2009).…”

“…On the other hand, USN services advance the attention to other factors as crucial determinants for data disclosure, due to their primary focus on initiation of relationships between strangers (Sapuppo and Sørensen, 2011;Sapuppo and Seet, 2012). Several influential factors that impact personal data disclosure in USN, such as users' current activities and location familiarity, were identified during an empirical investigation, based on predefined data disclosure preferences (Sapuppo, 2012a). This investigation provided statistically significant results, obtained by asking participants to predict their sharing preferences a priori the actual data disclosure.…”

Ubiquitous Social Networking: Concept and Evaluation

“…sharing of a static profile and predefined privacy preferences), we showed them results of a simulation of ad hoc privacy control mechanism, which takes into account both previous data disclosure decisions and relevant influential factors (e.g. location, activity, mood, mutual friends) that were proven to impact users' data disclosure decisions (Sapuppo, 2012;Consolvo et al, 2005;Sapuppo, 2013;Lederer et al, 2003a). For each participant, we presented his/her corresponding prediction result, obtained by processing his/her data disclosure decisions, collected while using the LSN prototype.…”