A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media

Abstract

In many aspects of healthy, science, educational, functional, and social life, social media networks today are part of the human lifestyle. Social media has more impact on human life and introduced significant changes in the way people’s way of communication. People exchange a lot of information across social media networks, starting with the sharing of information with the growth of information sharing at the moment, and the advancement of technology Users create overt networks to reflect their current or new social connections. Users also upload and post a plethora of personal details. Maintaining the privacy and security of the user is a main challenge in social media. Users should feel the importance of preserving the privacy of their data and how valuable information such as banking details and confidential data should be kept away from social media. Users can also post personal information about others without their permission. The problem is exacerbated by users' lack of familiarity and knowledge, as well as the lack of appropriate resources and architecture of social media networks. This paper provides study on many privacy and security challenges encountered by social media networks and the privacy threats they pose, as well as current studies into possible solutions.

Full text

Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security
on Social Media
https://doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v16i01.27761
Mohammed S. Albulayhi(*), Salim El Khediri
Department of Information Technology, College of Computer,
Qassim University, Buraydah, Saudi Arabia
mohmad199077@gmail.com
Abstract—In many aspects of healthy, science, educational, functional, and
social life, social media networks today are part of the human lifestyle. Social
media has more impact on human life and introduced signicant changes in
the way people’s way of communication. People exchange a lot of information
across social media networks, starting with the sharing of information with the
growth of information sharing at the moment, and the advancement of technol-
ogy Users create overt networks to reect their current or new social connections.
Users also upload and post a plethora of personal details. Maintaining the privacy
and security of the user is a main challenge in social media. Users should feel
the importance of preserving the privacy of their data and how valuable infor-
mation such as banking details and condential data should be kept away from
social media. Users can also post personal information about others without their
permission. The problem is exacerbated by users’ lack of familiarity and knowl-
edge, as well as the lack of appropriate resources and architecture of social media
networks. This paper provides study on many privacy and security challenges
encountered by social media networks and the privacy threats they pose, as well
as current studies into possible solutions.
Keywords—social media networks, security information, privacy, policy
enforcement
1 Introduction
The key idea of social media is to connect people of different societies and establish-
ments. It has also created many business opportunities for enterprises and individuals.
But this innovative and inuential social media leads to a lot of issues in both personal
and public critical security concerns. For the new promotion on their business the enter-
prises can analyze the users of social media like Facebook and twitter and nd the pat-
tern of their reactions for the several postings. And the HR managers review the social
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
accounts of their career candidates to conclude the nal selection for their recruitment.
even more than previous forms of web applicants [1].
Even after the chain of recruitment process like online application, written exam-
inations, group discussion, and the nal personal interview, the analysis of the social
accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) of the applicants are also plays a key role
on the recruitment process, at the nal decision-making process of the recruitment [1];
Police departments are using social media platforms to gather information in order to
prosecute crimes [2]; practices on public social sites are changing political regimes [2]
and swinging election results [2]. Since social media users are usually linked to peers,
families, and associates, there is a widespread belief that social media networks offer
a safer, condential, and trusting Internet-mediated atmosphere for online interaction.
In the short span of the last ten years the usage of social media has exploded to a
steeply rise and its impacts and effects are not expected for a such a level in every
aspects of human life. People across the globe, irrespective of sex, race, and culture
are using social media networks to communicate with known and unknown persons,
relatives, and non-relatives, working and non-working peoples, in ways that were pre-
viously impossible in the earlier days. The arrival of social media drastically improved
the approach of the communication and the presentation of the information among
themselves. The impact of social media not only enhance the personal communications
but also gives the way to promote the business among their customers by the compa-
nies and enterprises with the help of internet and networking facilities. Because of the
widespread use of social media, it is worth considering if users are relinquishing their
concealment of human and civil rights. Users are increasingly inclined to trust social
media networks with individual data, such as personal contacts and location, without
questioning what type of attacks on their data once it is gathered by the social media
companies [3]. Once the personal information of the individual users could have stored
on the server of the social media through the common internet, it is apparently assumed
that only those users would have access to it. But it is a big danger without the knowl-
edge of the security attacks and the hackers of the social media networks. Figure 1
shows the main reasons for using social media networks.
Fig. 1. Impact of social media networks [1]
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
People are incented to overshare classied details on social media, which offers a
major insecure outlet for data breaches, it provides the sufcient information to the data
breached to steal the user’s personal information and allows them to spread the data
over the network or to sell the data to the rival companies for a huge money. Figure 2
shows the history of social media network users. More than 4.5 billion people through-
out the world have access to the internet, and about 3800 million people use social
media. According to the current statistics by the middle percent of 2021, approximately
more than 50 percent of the global population will be connected through any one of
social network, while 65 percent of people are the using the online networks for any
purpose. The total number of persons accessing internet across the world will be raised
to 4500 million, a tremendous growth of 8 percent compared to the month of September
2020. The total number of social network account holders is 3800 million worldwide,
which is more than 9 percent compared to the previous year 2019.
Fig. 2. The history of social media network user
Irrespective of the tremendous effects of social media facilities on both personal and
business life of people, the big problem of using them is preserving the condentiality
of protecting personal data of the customer. The major distinctive of the privacy and
security matters of the social media network is the malware detection. The nature of the
malware is the spreading from the reliable sources and if the user clicks the link came
from the trusted user contacts [4]. The large amount of benets from the social media is
directly proportional to the privacy issues relied on the social media network. So nor-
mally the social media network is a wide and good platform the hackers whose major
income is the data breaches mechanism. The benets and the privacy issues are the
two sides of a coin. The latest survey conducted by the EY Global information security
reiterated that 60 percent people were of the global business enterprises experienced a
great set back of such data breaches that occurred during the last year.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
Fig. 3. The total malware growth rate in millions [5]
A global cyber-attack in 2012 by a hacker known as “Peace” exposed the pass-
words of over 200 million LinkedIn account holders. After these cyber-attacks, the
management of LinkedIn started to implement a new protocol. Even after ve years
the same hacker “Peace” started revealing the compromised password details from the
previously attacked LinkedIn account holders [4]. Since billions of social media users’
credentials and personal data are circulating across the internet, social media sites must
have tight protection. Every day, Facebook reports collecting as many as 600,000 secu-
rity hack attempts. Every day, the National Security Agency (NSA) reports 300 million
attempted hacks. Figure 3 shows the total malware growth rate in millions.
Misuse of identity, threats from third-party applications, trusting operators of social
media networking sites, phishing attacks, viruses, and malwares, legal difculties,
tracking users and privacy of data are all important challenges in social media net-
works. The safety of social media.
In the broader framework of data mining, advanced recordings of human conduct
in interpersonal organizations can be identied with a signicant amount of productive
analyzing in order to learn without invading users’ privacy. As a result, information
should be made available in such a way that privacy is protected and security is closely
monitored. Contrary to popular belief; however, it is exceedingly improbable that any
outsider interested in deciphering information can be relied upon, because gatherings
may desire to use all information, even sensitive and identifying information. Because
interpersonal organizations are so distinct, the best course of action is to guarantee the
uninching quality of privacy for the person who expresses afliation with them.
The rest of the paper is structured into another three sections. The related work on
the security and privacy of social media networks is analyzed in Section 2. The Prob-
able Hazards with its condentiality risk in Social media network Sites are explained
in Section 3. The trust management and their corresponding issues are given in the
fourth section. The last part summarizes the results of our investigations and the pro-
posed methodology to adopt security and privacy on social media networks with the
conclusion.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
2 Related work
Online social media networks have been an inevitable feature associated with the
everyday breathes in most of the people over the globe in recent years. Social network
users can create their own exclusive network for the purpose of establishing their per-
sonal and social communication links with the help of the social media service pro-
viders. All the users associated with this explicit link will share a lot of personal data
by uploading them continuously. Such personal privacy threats associated with these
actions were habitually overlooked and disregarded. Users, some time, also reveal sen-
sitive information to a wider public than they expected. Users may also share personal
information on other people ignoring the consent of others. This problem is exacerbated
by users’ lack of expertise and understanding, as well as the absence of appropriate
tools and structure of social media networks.
Open and unstructured methods were employed in this exploratory study to better
understand and know what people think they’re talking about friendships, privacy, and
privacy abuses. Unstructured interviews were conducted with an opportunistic group
of eight persons, who were given an introductory question and a topic of discussion to
have the conversation going. Three of the eight were guys, while the other ve were
women. They ranged in age from 23 to 32. Even though everyone in the group had at
least a bachelor’s degree, they came from a wide range of academic backgrounds. In
a similar manner, participants were questioned at their convenience and in quiet areas.
To record each interview, we used free open-source software (Audacity) and an inex-
pensive PC microphone. Interviews ranged in length from 10 to 26 minutes. The inter-
viewer avoided leading questions and suggestive body language to make the subject
feel at ease, open to debate, and unbiased.
Participants were asked about the importance of friendship before being quizzed
about an instance of privacy invasion in their lives. In order to better understand how
privacy breaches, affect friendships both before and after they occur, this research was
carried out to gather data. The inquiries into friendships and their advantages were
broader, but the inquiries into privacy violations were narrower.
While ethical issues were minor, they were taken into account, and actions were
taken to lessen the danger. Consent was granted with full knowledge. Participants were
made aware of their right to request the removal of their personal data at any time.
Interviewees were assured they could give however much or how little information
they wanted, and this was reafrmed when concerns about privacy were expressed. The
interviewer instructed not to prod the interviewee for more details if the subject matter
sounded distressing or sensitive. And last, if any unintended consequences occur, the
subject might address them with their interviewer, which would allow the interviewer
to give them appropriate assistance and refer them to experts in the eld concerned
(using the NHS Direct Web site).
In the eight interviews conducted, none of the subjects voiced any concern or desire
to have their information deleted. In order to discover modal concerns and motifs, the
transcriptions were subsequently subjected to thematic analyses.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
Privacy and Security issues on Social media network: Table 1 provides the con-
solidated data of the various categories of “privacy and security” issues encountered in
the social media services’ aggregator.
Table 1. Different types of privacy and security topics in social media networks
Type of Data Leakages Issues on the Social Media Networks
Data breeches with other customer Sybil attacks
Data breeches within social apps Compromised accounts
Data breeches within networks Social spam and malware
Data breeches within the group DDoS
Leaks and linkages to consumer knowledge and content concerns are related to
the possibility of information leakage. We consider a variety of organizations that are
involved in the leaking and linking of users’ information and content. Conversing with
other users may put users in danger, particularly if any of them are strangers or just
acquaintances.
Data leakages associated with the social media services leads to the several misuse
of internet users including phishing scam as described in [6]. This fraud of misus-
ing internet touched a level of 16 percentages. User credentials are similar to a social
contract inside which individuals share their own data for monetary or nonmonetary
rewards, which is the only drawback of privacy concerns. It goes without saying that
as long as the advantages of a very social contract outweigh the current and foreseeable
hazards of publicity, responsible consumers will remain interested in it. Notion says
that people make choices that maximize their benets while minimizing their expendi-
tures. This idea supports that theory. It’s been developed to exploit the interests of the
users in order to reveal the information that they’ve shared on social media sites like
Facebook and Twitter.
The major source for the occurrence of these threats are the hike in the social media
accounts holder, the usage of social network by the enterprises and the increase of
explicit communication link within the persons through the social media network.
Figures 4 and 5 show that the statistics of the internet frauds [7].
The recent detailed survey conducted by the popular security software company
Webfoot [6] shows that the major setback on using the social media networks is the
easy possibility of the attack on the user’s condential information about their nan-
cial status. These attacks will steal the log in credentials like user Id, Login password
and Transaction password of the social media network users. Their digital devices are
also affected by the malware, which was intestinally spread by the trusted user, while
accessing the social media networks. As per the new regulations and laws enforced by
the local government on the social media network service providers, the user’s con-
dential data and the nancial transactions must be shared with government agencies
whenever required. Both the data breeches by the cyber attacker and the intervention of
the government will in future be forcefully damage the relationship between users and
the service providers.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
Fig. 4. Internet fraud statistics [7]
Fig. 5. Internet fraud statistics [7]
A big scam on the attack of the Facebook user’s personal information was reported
on 2016 in the united states of America. The Cambridge Analytical [7] illegally helped
the presidential candidate by providing nearly 50 million FB users account information
and this indirectly inuence the result of the presidential election in favor of that can-
didate’s victory. According to the studies conducted by Pew Trust, every year nearly 85
percent of social media network users lodged complained that their personal informa-
tion is steeled and given to the many advertising companies by the attackers. They inter-
vened without their permission on their social media posts and provide the statistics to
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
their advertising agents and gained more and more. Unwanted leakage of user informa-
tion, along with the blurring of the technical and personal sides of users’ lives caused by
social media networks, allows for serious accidents. The destinations of social media
network pages’ act to enhance privacy settings. As a big feature of their default design
structure many large-scale social media service providers, restrict security. Clients must
go into their account conguration and change their security preferences.
Furthermore, the large amount of individual information is collected with the help
of both technically impaired ordinary consumer and because of social media networks’
inability to have modern condentiality devices, has drawn many numbers of compa-
nies to extract and provide that data to their business collaborators. Figure 6 displays
that the shadow prole problem, in which SPP system encompasses a portion ‘m’ which
is the total magnitude of the users and ‘n’ is total size of the user who share their contact
details [8].
Fig. 6. Shadow prole [8]
The spread of malware relevant data through the social media network is another
inevitable and unwanted effect. Even though the rumor was already existed in the
society in the ancient days, its spreading has less effect and slow spreading among
the people. But nowadays the fake news can spread as the speed of light propaga-
tion through the social media network as virus. Since the last March 2020, the news
about the “corona Virus” both in the sense of good awareness and bad afraid, spread in
the rocket speed through the social media network [9].
One more attack on the social media network is called as “Botnet”. Automated
accounts known as botnets create messages or follow new users on social media sites
when a certain word is typed in. There are many bots in a botnet, which acts as a net-
work. Data is stolen, spam is propagated, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)
attacks are carried out with the help of bots and botnets on social media [10]. Botnet
structures usually take one of two forms, and each structure is designed to give the
botmaster as much control as possible. Figure 7 shows the Propaganda Botnets on
Social Media.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
Fig. 7. Propaganda botnets on social media [9]
Creating harmful group events on social media networks is simple thanks to the net-
works’ well-known mobilization function. Social media networking sites, micro-blogs,
and other forms of social communication, which take advantage of the powerful new
media features, can be easily abused by those who wish to propagate misinformation
and encourage violence.
Attacks on social media networks are aimed in targeting to attack the service pro-
vider directly, posing a threat to its main market. Social media network is using the
attacks named as Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks which was targeted to
create a forum to spread fake news in the form of spam and malware.
This type assaults are carried out in different variety of methods. Like Sybil attach
which is a method of subverting a reputation system by generating many identities,
intruders may generate many identities to spread malware or spam content. Attackers
may also illegally make use of the credentials built by unknown person to conduct
coordinated attacks. It’s worth noting that the attacks on social media networks have an
impact on platform consumers as well. Attacks on social media networks, on the other
hand, take advantage of the social graph of the network to victimize additional people
by spreading quickly. As a result, the service provider’s highest priority was the detec-
tion and interrupt the dissemination [11] [12] [13]. The groups and protection issues are
summarized in Table 2.
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Table 2. Comparisons of privacy and security od social media networks
among reference papers
Reference Advantages Disadvantages Comments
[1] Joshi, P.
& Kuo, C.-C.
Examine the mathematical
formulations and simulation
methods for social media
network integrity and
condentiality.
There are no feasible
methods for an
intruder to perform an
attack.
Algorithms should be
created to infer condence
in social media networks as
vulnerabilities and security
breaches grow more context
aware.
[2] Ricard
Fogues, et al.
offer a list of privacy dangers
that may impact users of social
media network services, as well
as the requirements that privacy
procedures should meet to avoid
this threat.
The suggested
paradigm and
terminology must be
adaptable enough to
allow for multiple
social media network
solutions that cover
a wide range social
feature.
Current techniques must be
examined to see how well
they meet the criteria.
[3] S.
Kumari, et al.
A detailed Evaluation of Data
security on Social Media,
as well as the dynamics of
intersecting organizations in the
real world are presented.
No multiple
regression analysis
to ignore the growth
of the organization
including the network
backbone.
To be deployed, more
developed theoretical models
describing the link among
the expertise mechanism and
community membership.
[4] M.
Ismailov,
et al.
given a summary of typical
state-of-the-art outcomes on
detecting identity trick, as
identied by the authors.
Not identied
common
methodological
weaknesses.
It is better to identify
the weakness and some
recommendations to be
proposed.
[5] Hossain,
et al.
present PriMa (Privacy
Manager), a condential system
that provides development of
access restrictions for users’
prole information, bridging the
gap between SN users’ privacy
management demands and the
privacy protection methods of
existing social media networks.
There aren’t any
examples of how an
attacker may attack.
The scientic interpretation
may be considered into
account.
3 Proposed methodology for social media privacy problems
This study’s sole aim focusing on connecting a measurable scheme associating a
particular outcome of specious investigating the public data of prospective customers.
This system retrieves the personal credentials, residential details and so on. To help
with this, we created a survey method that would be extensively used and disseminated
to over 200 social media participants, with the population determined with the help of
special technique. As a result, this thorough research has concentrated more on pri-
vacy issues related to social networks and has essentially jolted out privacy violations.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
We dened some of the privacy issues that Facebook users should address before
using social media and incorporated them into the site’s privacy settings to avoid any
violations.
For a long time, privacy concerns about e-commerce transactions were the main
focus of attention because of credit card theft and the misuse of personal information by
vendors. But now that people are more concerned about the content they share online,
the focus has shifted. Individuals putting personal information on their pages or the
SNS allowing unrestricted “default” access are the two most common ways that iden-
tity fraud is perpetrated on social media. Aside from obvious issues such as credit card
fraud, identity theft, and data storage problems, users’ own behaviors, such as youths’
tendency to “sext,” cyberbullying, and the difculty controlling personal information
can all put privacy at risk.
Privacy can be viewed from the perspective of having control. Keep control over
personal data, decision to release data, physical interaction of others, number of people
participating in disclosure or decision about who you chat and discuss issues with is
crucial to maintaining privacy. Control. With a focus on social relationship with our
surroundings, Altman developed the concept of personal, dyadic, and collective bor-
ders to limit privacy and transparency. On a day-to-day basis, these restrictions are
readily apparent. The person we are speaking with is aware of our body language and
vocalizations; the person we are writing to is aware of our posture and movements; how
much we have heard and from whom we have heard it; who can see us as we walk down
the street; that see us choose restroom; if cameras are keep pointing at us; if someone
or something has touched us; and if we have touched someone or something is aware
(whether friendly or unfriendly). In an SNS setting, controlling these barriers and the
information ow across them can be difcult due to the ambiguous meaning attached
to the word “friend.” The term “friend” is frequently used on social media to refer to a
variety of prospective interpersonal ties.
3.1 Social media user’s behavior prediction
This research aims to nd out how social media users perceive anonymity and con-
dentiality in social networking sites [7]. A sample of 200 respondent’s understud-
ies was selected at random from various parts of the globe. A total of 185 surveys
were successfully lled and returned. Males made up about 78 percent of the respon-
dents, while females made up about 22 percent. On the other hand, about 72 percent of
respondents were between the ages of 20 and 35. However, the number of populations
comprises groups “between 28 and 41” was almost 19 percent, while the number of
populations comprises groups “50 and up” was close to zero. The educational stan-
dard has a signicant effect, with four-year certication accounting for 58 percent and
progress grades accounting for 30 percentages. An increased usage of network reects
some similarities in of social association, with 56 percent of those who have been using
the site for more than 10 years, and if we link the use with the essence of SN, we get
51 percent for moderately well-known and 49 percent for extremely well-known.
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3.2 Condentiality problems and troubles
As seen in Table 3, when asked about protection, the knowledge on the security
awareness provided by the social media network service provider, only 50 percentage
of the user only somewhat familiar. Many service providers change their security set-
ting in such a way cannot be changed or accessed by the user itself on their personal
information. They did not allow the user to change their prole without proper and
well-dened authenticated process. Nowadays three stages of authentication process
are carried out carried out by the social network platforms to access the prole of the
user. However, when it comes to changing security settings, 43 regression coefcient
their privacy conguration every so often, which means only if anything happens, and
47 percent modify their protection setting on a regular basis, which is the same for
security and record setting. We listed the various privacy controls provided by the ser-
vice provider to their customers during login process in Table 3 below. There is a vast
spectrum of sexism that exists in social media sets when it comes to providing privacy
policies to consumers, and based on the results of the poll, many users of social net-
working sites have not given any thought to their security settings and have left their
privacy data as they are.
Table 3. The comparison of secrecy concerns in social media networks
Secrecy choices Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Google+
Active users’ visibility
Restriction
Allowed Not Allowed Not Allowed Not Allowed
Control on locating the
users
Allowed Allowed Allowed Not Allowed
Blocking facility with
image
Allowed Not Allowed Not Allowed Allowed
Login Alerts Allowed Not Allowed Not Allowed Allowed
Blocking facility with
spam
Allowed Allowed Allowed Allowed
Restriction on the new
message
Allowed Not Allowed Allowed Allowed
3.3 Privacy setup on social networking sites
The privacy settings on social networking sites are reinforced. As part of their basic
settings, Facebook and other long-distance social networking sites minimize protec-
tion. To change their protection options, clients must go into their client settings. Cli-
ents can choose not to display personal data such as their date of birth, phone number,
email address, or company status on sites like Facebook. For those who choose to
include this information, Facebook allows users to restrict access to their prole to just
those they identify as “companions.” Regardless, even this level of anonymity isn’t
enough to prevent one of those companions from downloading a snapshot to their own
computer and uploading it elsewhere. Nonetheless, fewer social networking site users
have restricted their proles recently.
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Paper—A Comprehensive Study on Privacy and Security on Social Media
Take, for example, how individuals can limit the display of their proles to others on
various social media sites If you’re on Facebook, for example, you can choose to hide
your prole from other users. xFacebook: The default privacy setting for new users on
Facebook is Friends Only. To make this adjustment, navigate to Settings > Privacy >
Who can see your future postings. Protect my Tweets in Twitter’s Security and Privacy
Settings: Twitter: Security and privacy settings > Privacy > Tweet privacy If you’d like
to update anything about your public prole, go to xLinkedIn:Settings xTwitter and edit
it there. to change this setting, write the name of a Circle in the “To” box under your
article before you publish it.
Facebook may clearly state that they cannot guarantee the privacy of their users’
information, and that if users make their proles public, all information included within
may be viewed by job interviewers and school board members. Remember that most
long-distance informal communication destinations encourage you to close applica-
tions, hide your buddy list, and hide your interests. As a matter of course, much of the
data is still open. It is critical that all clients of long-distance interpersonal commu-
nication sites limit access to their proles, do not submit data on illegal or arrange-
ment-breaking behaviors to their proles, and be cautious of the information they make
available.
4 Types of relationship tie
We live in a social context where managing the ow of personal information to
various connection links is critical. We release more information about ourselves with
those whom we have an intimate relationship since it is part of the private tie of inti-
macy. With an intimate relationship, we may convey different information than with
parents. According to Reiman, “we can only give out personal information to friends
and/or strangers because we can hide it from the rest of the world—and limit inti-mate
observation of ourselves” (1976). Intimate partners and parents, for example, may have
different information needs. There are no close connections between friends and/or
lovers unless we are able to share personal information regarding ourselves with oth-
ers, and disallow intimate views of ourselves, according to Reiman (1976). A person’s
personality and personal information are important since it helps determine how private
or detailed the information is when determining which parts of one’s personality and
personal information to expose to various kinds of partnerships. This is important. As
per Altman and Taylor (1973), the different and evolving layers of an onion represent
the primacy of personality. Some researchers believe that the importance of individuals
inside a social network is linked to their expectations of privacy. Personal information
is considered a violation of privacy if it is acquired by another party and made available
to connections above what the individual’s own implies and close buddy circle would
reasonably expect [14].
Whenever we connect online, either on a social media platform, the line between
who can see our data or images blurs. Virtually [15] exacerbates the difculty of man-
aging people. By adding multiple “ties” to our friends list on sites like Facebook [11],
it becomes difcult to control access and sharing with a variety of different people and
“friend” category members. For example, photos of intoxicated trips may be swiftly
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shared with friends, but can they be readily discussed with family, colleagues, or even
potential employers? Unless the photos are restricted and governed by frequently
sophisticated privacy settings, anyone on the “friends” list can see them online. To
make matters worse [11], it’s becoming increasingly difcult to maintain control over
social spheres, which might lead to privacy intrusions.
Concerns about privacy on social media platforms can differ depending on the site
being used and the user’s privacy options and site settings. As an illustration, Facebook
enables users to create a public prole that contains information such as photographs,
home town, date of birth, relationship status, and e-mail address [16]. The information
is then made available to the whole public, including those who may not know you. As
a result, until the privacy settings are changed, users may not be aware of the recipients
of the information they’re sharing. Additionally, releasing personal and private infor-
mation may cause security difculties including phishing, leakage of information and
stalking [17].
Personal information shared by default across all social networking sites, such as a
user’s photo, is not immune to privacy concerns on such sites, even if it is not publicly
shared [17]. In the wake of the recent changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, many
users’ information (such as images and lists of “friends”) are now exposed to everyone
by default, further aggravating the problem.
Outside access, such as identifying prole images, demographic data, or distinct
interests from other SNS, has tended to dominate discussions of privacy and social net-
working sites [18]. Other external concerns could stem from SNS’s widespread usage
of unsecured login connections, which provide simple access to other parties including
hackers, identity thieves, and the government [18]. Even if private information is will-
ingly shared by a site user, there are additional privacy concerns inside the SNS and
the network of contacts [18]. Some instances include the sharing and tagging of pho-
tographs that identify other users, disclosing demographic information, and disclosing
personal information on prole websites that involves other users [19].
Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that having information about one’s home-
town and date of birth makes it easier to calculate Social Security numbers (SSN) in
the United States [19].
Bonneau & Preibusch (2009) found a wide range of privacy control options on the 45
social networking sites they visited. Privacy rules, privacy controls, and informational
measures, according to Bonneau and Preibusch (2009), are frequently cumbersome and
fall short of expectations. Even if privacy-enhancing features are available, sites rarely
publicize them when it comes to maintaining privacy on social media platforms [20].
As a result, if users are uninformed that privacy dangers exist, they are unlikely to be
prompted by a social media platform that does not market such features, and therefore
unidentied data sharing may persist. For this reason, it is possible that SNS will not
publicize their features: even for users who aren’t concerned about privacy, growing
attention to privacy controls may cause users to become more careful and share fewer
information [20], minimizing the richness of content and thus the experience of the
users and their contributions [21].
Today’s Internet use raises several questions about one’s right to privacy. There is
an increase in the number of SNS and SNS users, making it increasingly difcult to
control how information is shared and concealed [11]. In social networking sites, the
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“friends” umbrella’s cumulative nature of social spheres, or connection types, exacer-
bates issues. It is common for users to be unaware that their data is being gathered and
stored on a large scale [22]. Often, they’re unaware of the perils of hanging out with a
bunch of “pals” Online and SNS privacy issues like credit card fraud, identity theft, and
what kind of information people put on their SNS pages are frequently discussed [23].
Despite the validity of these worries, it’s not clear what participants consider a violation
of their privacy or whether researchers share their concerns.
Many people were interviewed about their personal experiences and friendships to
have a better understanding of the difculties and impacts of dealing with and being the
victim of a privacy invasion [24][25]. We queried about privacy violations in general,
rather than especially online, but it became evident that the majority of participants’
privacy was infringed because they used Facebook. Due of privacy’s potential role as
a method of control for limiting detailed info ows to certain kinds of relationships,
we questioned interviewees whether friends and friendship signied to them in order
examine these links between privacy and friendship [26][27][28].
5 Solutions for social media network privacy and security issues
The general method for shielding information from social media networks is focused
on the observation that false data can be used to operate them. Users will also access
social media networks without offering actual evidence if the operations that social
media networks run on fake information can be traced once again with back to initial
information.
FB service provider introduced a feature named as Fly-by-night to their account
holders, which allows the customer to connect in online without giving the recordable
conversation on platform. During the set-up Fly-by-night Facebook app produces a
condential password with a pair of private keys. Then the app perform encryption on
the private keys with the use of condential password and the output of the encryption
process was saved in local computer. During the installation process of a client-side
JavaScript is downloaded, which was available on the server of Fly-by-night facility.
A key was generated and used for the decryption to nd the password. This process
was the combinational in nature with the integration of the attribute-based encryption
(ABE) and the cryptography public key.
An application named as Persona masks user data from the social network. Per-
sona implements the key functionalities of existing social media networks as apps,
such as accounts, walls, notes, and so on. Persona makes use of the request “Loading”
which allow the account holder for saving their condential data and felicitates the
sharing them over the network. The Facebook Persona app is equivalent to every other
third-party Facebook app except that user’s log in by authenticating via the browser
extension. Persona’s exclusive markup language is translated by the browser extension.
Persona databases provide its all the available information with the help of cloud tech-
nology with high level of security.
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6 Conclusion
The privacy and security on the social media network are an inevitable mechanism
to be employed, because of its impact on the revolutionary usage of internet globally
and locally. The entire community using the social network comprises of two type of
groups based on the acceptance on providing their personal and condential data over
the media. One group of people willing to share their information with others without
hesitation. But most of the user have no willingness to share their data with social
media service provider. So, the greatest success on the development of social network
is solely depends on the security mechanism provided by them to secure the users sen-
sitive data. Rally in future, there is no life without social media network. So, it is the
responsibility of both the user and service provider to adhere the privacy and security
mechanism in order to save their condential data. The existence of the cyber attacker
cannot be avoided but their operability can be surely restricted with the help of the most
complicated security mechanism, which are clearly given and analyzed in this paper.
It has been found that privacy issues in social media websites are very weak, and
users’ efforts to make effective improvements to their social media privacy are much
lower than in other modes of security operations. Furthermore, many social media
consumers lack technological skills, resulting in low privacy issues about their own
posts. Many of the aws and hiccups on the technological side of privacy and security
controls on social media platforms were found in the statistics collected. As a result,
we identied the potential source of the issues and recommended reforms to address
the social media networking site’s privacy concerns. We might protect social media
networks against more attacks and bugs if we enforced a multilevel authenticated strat-
egy while creating login credential with any social media networks. It includes creat-
ing unbreakable keys, modifying passwords often, becoming mindful of information
leakage, knowing the intent of antivirus or similar applications, and proprietary apps,
among other things.
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8 Authors
Mohammed S. Albulayhi is an Master thesis student in cybersecurity at Depart-
ment of Information Technology, College of Computer, Qassim University, Buraydah
51941, Saudi Arabia. ORCID: 0000-0002-1296-4742; Email: 421100196@qu.edu.sa
and mohmad199077@gmail.com
Salim El Khediri is an Assistant professor at Department of Information Technol-
ogy, College of Computer, Qassim University, Buraydah 51941, Saudi Arabia. Email:
S.ELKHEDIRI@qu.edu.sa
Article submitted 2021-10-22. Resubmitted 2021-12-06. Final acceptance 2021-12-17. Final version
published as submitted by the authors.
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