Lockr: better privacy for social networks

Today's online social networking (OSN) sites do little to protect the privacy of their users' social networking information. Given the highly sensitive nature of the information these sites store, it is understandable that many users feel victimized and disempowered by OSN providers' terms of service. This paper presents Lockr, a system that improves the privacy of centralized and decentralized online content sharing systems. Lockr offers three significant privacy benefits to OSN users. First, it separates social networking content from all other functionality that OSNs provide. This decoupling lets users control their own social information: they can decide which OSN provider should store it, which third parties should have access to it, or they can even choose to manage it themselves. Such flexibility better accommodates OSN users' privacy needs and preferences. Second, Lockr ensures that digitally signed social relationships needed to access social data cannot b...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: CONEXT
• Authors: Amin Tootoonchian, Stefan Saroiu, Yashar Ganjali, Alec Wolman
• Keywords: Computer Networks, CONEXT 2009, Osn Providers, Privacy, Social