From False-Free to Privacy-Oriented Communitarian Microblogging Social Networks

Online Social Networks(OSNs)havegainedenormouspopularity in recent years. They provide a dynamic platform for sharing content (text messages or multimedia) and for facilitating communication between friends and acquaintances. Microblogging services are a popular form of OSNs. They allow sending smal...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Marquès Puig, Joan Manuel, Rifà-Pous, Helena, Oukemeni, Samia
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/151403
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10609/151403
https://doi.org/10.1145/3555354
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:microblogging services
online social networks
privacy
decentralization
censorship-resistance
Descripción
Sumario:Online Social Networks(OSNs)havegainedenormouspopularity in recent years. They provide a dynamic platform for sharing content (text messages or multimedia) and for facilitating communication between friends and acquaintances. Microblogging services are a popular form of OSNs. They allow sending small messages in a one-to-many messaging model so that users can communicate with their favorite celebrity, brand, politician, or other regular users without the obligation of a pre-existing social relationship. A chain of privacy-related scandals linked to questionable data handling practices in microblogging services has arisen in the last past few years. Most current microblogging service providers offer centralized services and their business model is based on monitoring, analyzing, and selling users’ activity and patterns. In the end, the personal information shared by the users to benefit from the free-of-charge services is used for the underlying payment in such systems. In this paper, we present Garlanet, a privacy-aware censorship-resistant microblogging social network that does not rely on a centralized service provider as all data is hosted in computers voluntarily contributed by the users of the system. Garlanet provides microblogging functionalities while protecting privacy and preserving the confidentiality and integrity of users and data. It ensures that users’ identities and their social graphs are hidden from the system and adversaries and it provides availability and scalability of the services. We also evaluate the privacy level of Garlanet and we compare it with the privacy level of eight other microblogging systems.