Privacy issues in post dissemination on Facebook

Abstract

With social networks (SNs) being populated by a still increasing numbers of people who take advantage of the communication and collaboration capabilities that they offer, the probability of the exposure of people's personal moments to a wider than expected audience is also increasing. By studying the functionalities and characteristics that modern SNs offer, along with the people's habits and common behaviors in them, it is easy to understand that several privacy risks may exist, many of which people may be unaware of. In this paper, we focus on users' interactions with posts in a social network (SN), using Facebook as our research domain, and we emphasize some privacy leakages currently existing in Facebook's privacy policy. We also propose a solution to detected privacy issues, featuring a reference implementation of a tool based on a simulation, which visualizes the effect of potential privacy risks on Facebook and directs users to control their privacy. The proposed and simulated tool allows a post owner to observe the spreading area of his or her post depending on the selected privacy settings. Moreover, it provides preliminary feedback for all Facebook users that have interacted with this post, to make them aware of the possible privacy changes, aiming to give them a chance to protect the privacy of their interaction on this post by deleting it when an unwanted privacy change takes place. Finally, an online survey to increase privacy awareness in Facebook usage with over 500 volunteer participants has illuminated the need for such a tool or solution.