IJIRST || National Conference on Latest Trends in Networking and Cyber Security || March 2017
Privacy and Security Issues in Social Online
Networks
Radhika Bhagat1 Rajvi Modi2 Palaumi Patel3 Mr. Harshil Joshi4
1,2,3
UG Student 4Assistant Professor
1,2,3,4
Department of Computer Engineering
1,2,3,4
SAL Institute of Technology & Engineering Research, Ahmedabad
Abstract— Trend of social networking is burgeoning at tremendous rate. This constant use of internet poses potential dangers
to all those people using it. Internet security includes taking measures against malicious attacks over internet and internet
privacy includes exposure of private information to third party. Naïve users, especially teenagers reveal their private
information comprehending of their location, current status, reputationally damaging photos, etc to the whole world. By
keeping security and privacy settings open to public, they create insecure channel through which private information is
exchanged which leads to a high risk of intrusion. Often users fall victim of a hyperlink or advertisement, which have catchy
or provocative headline that entices a user to click to continue reading an article, which leads to infection of malware to their
devices. Our study of survey paper includes all these unfavourable circumstances that befall to the community of social online
network users and how they can manage to save themselves from this kind of cyber-crime. Some suggestions or remedies will
also be given to the users in this survey paper to prevent themselves from malicious software.
Key words: Social Network, Internet, Security, Privacy, Information, Cyber-Crime
I. INTRODUCTION
According to the quote seen on Facebook’s site – “Connect with friends and the world around you on Facebook”, the naïve
community of the internet users often forget to whom they should connect and how much information they should share. A
Social Networking Site (SNS) is an online platform that is used by people to build social networks or relations with other
people who share similar interest, activities, background or connections. This survey paper explains us how the users fall
victim to the issues of security and privacy of social media and gives information about whether there are any ways to prevent
themselves from exposing.
There will be some surveys, graphs and other information given about all the types of data of a person which are at a
high risk of intrusion by cyber-criminals and hackers leading to cyber-attacks or identity thefts. Finally, the survey paper will
be concluded by some useful suggestions or ideas which can be beneficial and serviceable to the populace on internet.
II. USERS OF SOCIAL ONLINE NETWORKS
The above graph shows number of people using all kinds of social networking sites to interact with each other. People now
get all kinds of information consisting of news, gossips, latest updates from technology to movie stars on social media. Now a
days any big or small news travel through the whole world via internet in a blink of an eye. People share all kinds of personal
information and images on this very same media. This is an age where people live their social lives online. For example,
Facebook[1] revealed in white paper that its users have uploaded more than 250 billion photos, and are uploading 350 million
new photos each day. SNS[25] are currently being used regularly by millions of people. People [25] use Social Networking Sites
for countless activities. Among the most common uses are, connecting with existing networks, making and developing
friendships/contacts, create an online presence for their users, viewing content/finding information, creating and customizing
profiles and so on.
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Fig. 1: Number[2] of active users
III. SECURITY ISSUES IN ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS
While using social media, people often tend to forget the security issues that comes with the increasing usage of using such
sites. While revealing personal information to accepting an unknown friend request, everything is associated with breaches of
security. Various security issues that has happened or are happening which are related to social media are described below:
A. Identity Theft[3][4]
Identity Theft is an act of stealing someone’s identity or sensitive information, and then pretending to be that person, or using
that identity in a malicious way. Identity[5] theft includes the misuse of another individual’s personal information to commit
fraud. Social networks are promising targets that attract attackers since they contain a huge number of available user’s
information. One[6] technique of identity theft is profile cloning. In this technique, attackers take advantage of trust among
friends, and that people are not careful when they accept friend requests.
1) Suggestion
Users should always check the profile thoroughly before accepting to any unknown friend request and if they find the profile
confusing or doubtful, they should report the profile for their own safety.
B. Phishing[3][7][9]
In phishing, attackers create a mock login page which when filled by the user, gives the information like password to the
attacker. Using this information the attacker gains access to the user’s profile and other personal information.
1) Suggestion
Users should only login with their id and password from trustworthy devices. Users should not login to any unknown
websites.
C. Bruteforce Attack[8][10]
The hacker repeatedly attempts to guess a user’s password.
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This technique is very effective against user’s password that are short or easy-to-guess like “123456” or “password”.
Brute[9] force attack attempts on a huge number of key combinations on trial-and-error basis.
1) Suggestion
Users should keep their password lengthy and should use as many characters as they can. They should add special characters
and numbers and their passwords should not be predictable. For eg: Pet’s name.
D. Sybil Attack[11][12]
Here, an individual entity masquerades as multiple simultaneous identities. A concrete example is that by controlling many
identities, the adversary can promote the popularity and reputation of an account in e-commerce setting by voting the target
account as “good”.
1) Suggestion
It is not only user’s responsibility to check if they are using a trustworthy website or not. There should be a committee which
regulate all the websites and if they give a trustworthy mark on the website then only the user should register or login
themselves otherwise the user should think twice before entering their personal information.
E. Trojan Attack[13][14]
A part of Malware attack called Trojan attack is such where the attack lures user into infection by promising racy content
through a link available on social media. Once the user click on the link, victims are able to view a preview of content present
on link. But the users are intruded half way and are asked to download an application or a software which is likely to contain
some malicious content which infects victim and allow hackers to control keyboard or mouse activities. It also give rights to
the hackers to post links to the users’ accounts and tagging other friends hence infecting other users too.
1) Suggestion
Third party applications should not be installed in user’s devices. Users can download applications from trusted vendors like
Google.
IV. PRIVACY ISSUES IN ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS
Whenever a user create a profile on social networking sites, often the user ignore the privacy settings given in the settings of
the social media. Social networks hold a plethora of personal information on the users that form the network. All the images
uploaded, any personal information like birthdate, current address, telephone number, interests, hobbies, status, location etc.
should be seen to only those people the user trust. It is also seen that some people have posted their credit card numbers on
social media. Not all those people on the social media are authentic and thus every detail should not be revealed to everybody
by keeping it open. The information should be changed to “seen by added friends only”. Some privacy threats are explained
below:
A. Cyber Stalking[8][22]
Popular social networking sites makes it easy for users to build a web of friends and acquaintances, and share photos,
whereabouts, contact information, and interests. With the amount of information that users post about themselves online, it is
easy for users to become a victim of stalking without even being aware of it. 63% of Facebook profiles are visible to the
public, meaning if you Google someone’s name and you add "+Facebook" in the search bar you pretty much will see most of
the persons profile. Cyber-stalking[21] victims are less likely to know the identity of their harassers.
1) Suggestion
Every user should keep their profile hidden from unknown users. The information should only be seen by trusted users.
B. Cyber Bullying[8][23]
Cyber bullying includes mean messages or rumours, embarrassing pictures or videos posted on posted on social networking
sites. All these images or text are posted anonymously and distributed quickly to a very wide audience. Deleting those
messages or pictures becomes very difficult after they have be posted everywhere. Cyber-bullying[24] is different from
traditional bullying due to the anonymity that the Internet can provide. According [24] to Willard (2006), there are nine main
forms of cyberbullying: flaming, harassment, denigration, impersonation, outing, trickery, exclusion, cyberstalking and cyber-
treats.
1) Suggestion
It becomes extremely important to hide your pictures from third party users. A user should be alert whenever he or she gets
mean or embarrassing messages and the user should quickly report the unknown profile.
C. Profile Cloning[6][20]
Profile cloning especially facebook profile cloning is a type of identity theft where unknown users literally make a second
profile that looks exactly like the current one. Then they send friend request to all of the user’s friends from that cloned
profile fooling everyone. The fraud user then are able to communicate with all of the user’s friends using user’s identity.
So[19] the friends might face difficulty in differentiating between genuine and fake identity.
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1) Suggestion
To prevent oneself from being cloned, the user should not accept unknown friend request as well as change their cover
photos/ profile photos on a regular basis. If the user has been cloned, the best solution is to delete the user’s profile
completely from the social networking sites and the user should communicate with their friends about it.
V. CONCLUSION
Agglomerating, all the points elaborated above, it can be concluded that even though social media has contributed a lot in
ample ways, like every coin, social networking sites also have a negative side. A[16] security environment is to be achieved by
improving the stronger security and increasing privacy. All the issues mentioned above does not obfuscate the fact that social
media has some advantages too. It helps the users grow themselves into a social world by meeting and befriending those
people who share the same interests, work or community as the user does. But it is advisory that the users should be alert
while using social online networks.
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