Privacy in Geo-social Networking Systems
Abstract
With the proliferation of the Internet and GPS enabled smartphones, Geo-Social
Computing Systems (GSCS) have seen widespread adoption. Facebook, Twitter, Waze,
Geofeedia, WeLink are among the many GSCS with various members and services.
These systems rapidly gained traction for two types of target users, a) GSCS
members (data contributors), and b) GSCS data consumers.Although GSCS deliver valuable services, they also generate a host of privacy
challenges. Protecting members' identity and their location information is a
notable challenge in GSCS. Close examination of nine real life GSCS applications
enabled me to identify four major challenges that can lead to insufficient
privacy protection for members of GSCS. Unregulated access, policy
conformity, privacy in publishing GSCS data, and data utility in published data
are the focus of the challenges.
Contributions of this thesis can be categorized
into two main perspectives within the identified challenges. First, privacy of
members inside the geo-social computing systems and second, privacy of members when these systems publish
members' data.
In each identified privacy challenge, I proposed an
approach to address the challenge, and developed my designed approaches to
demonstrate a tangible solution for each challenge.
The results of this research provide knowledge that can help other researchers
to recognize and address more privacy concerns in the GSNSs environment. This
knowledge includes insight into theory and practice of privacy within the
context of access control models, policy enforcement in a federated environment,
privacy attacks and countermeasures in published data, and
analytic tools for privacy experts.
Description
Keywords
Computer Science
Citation
Tarameshloo, E. (2016). Privacy in Geo-social Networking Systems (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27436