A Privacy Preservation Model for Facebook-Style Social Network Systems

Abstract. Recent years have seen unprecedented growth in the popularity of social network systems, with Facebook being an archetypical example. The access control paradigm behind the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook is distinctly different from such existing access control paradigms as Discretionary Access Control, Role-Based Access Control, Capability Systems, and Trust Management Systems. This work takes a first step in deepening the understanding of this access control paradigm, by proposing an access control model that formalizes and generalizes the privacy preservation mechanism of Facebook. The model can be instantiated into a family of Facebook-style social network systems, each with a recognizably different access control mechanism, so that Facebook is but one instantiation of the model. We also demonstrate that the model can be instantiated to express policies that are not currently supported by Facebook but possess rich and natural social significance. This work thu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ESORICS
• Authors: Philip W. L. Fong, Mohd M. Anwar, Zhen Zhao
• Keywords: Access Control Mechanism, Access Control Model, Access Control Paradigm, ESORICS 2009, Security Privacy