A Privacy Awareness System for Facebook Users
Charles HÃ©lou, Ala Eddine Gandouz, Esma AÃ¯meur
Journal of Information Security Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2012.
DOI: 
Link: http://www.dline.info/jisr/fulltext/v3n1/3.pdf
Abstract:
Social networking sites have experienced a steady and dramatic increase in the number of users over the past several years. Thousands of user accounts, each including a significant amount of private data, are created daily. As such, an almost countless amount of sensitive and private information is read and shared across the various accounts. This jeopardizes the privacy and safety of many social network users and mandates the need to increase the usersâ€™ awareness about the potential hazards they are exposed to on these sites. We introduce Protect_ U, a privacy protection system for Facebook users. Protect_ U analyzes the content of user profiles and ranks them according to four risk levels: Low Risk, Medium Risk, Risky and Critical. The system then suggests personalized recommendations designed to allow users to increase the safety of their accounts. In order to achieve this, Protect_ U draws upon both the local and community-based protection models. The first model uses a Face book userâ€™s personal data in order to suggest recommendations, and the second seeks out the userâ€™s most trustworthy friends to encourage them to help improve the safety of his/her account.