Privacy in microblogging online social networks: issues and metrics

Abstract

In the era of digital life, privacy is threatened by the rapid expansion of online social media, especially Microblogging Online Social Networks (MOSNs). Whether users are connected in real life or not, microblogging systems are a popular form of Online Social Networks (OSNs) that allow users to post short messages, share interests, and communicate with each other. Despite this popularity, they have a poor reputation in terms of protecting the privacy of users. The present paper examines different types of privacy threats and concerns in MOSNs. The threats can be either classic and common to other online platforms or specific to the environment of OSNs. In addition, this article describes various models that assess and quantify privacy in OSNs and finally proposes a new generic framework to evaluate the privacy in MOSNs. The proposed framework indicates the level of privacy protection provided by the system and helps to compare different MOSNs.