Privacy in Social Network Sites

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Synopsis

Social Network Sites (SNS) have become the prime medium to share information, organize events and get your ideas out to the world. Recently, SNS have been used to support American presidential campaigns and to smuggle photos of a natural disaster out of the country of Myanmar. However, the centralized collection, processing and dissemination of such as large amount of identity-relevant information has led to increased disclosure of sensitive information, identity theft and physical and mental harm. This calls for a thorough consideration of why we should restrain access to our identity-relevant information and how a concept of privacy in SNS could be developed.This thesis examines privacy issues in Social Network Sites and presents a prioritization of the privacy risks that users of these websites face. Furthermore, a framework is developed to analyze these privacy threats and develop preventive measures.David Riphagen graduated from the Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management (SEPAM) Master program at Delft University of Technology. He conducted the preliminary and exploratory phases of this research at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC, USA.This publication is based on Riphagens Master Thesis and is part of the conference on Privacy in Social Network Sites held at Delft University of Technology in October 2008. The conference program can be found in this publication. The conference was made possible by the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, XS4ALL and the TU Delft Platform for Ethics and Technology. (www.privacyinsocialnetworksites.nl) (www.ethicsandtechnology.eu)