Title: User privacy protection in pervasive social networking applications using PCO

Authors: Farzana Rahman; Md. Endadul Hoque; Ferdaus Ahmed Kawsar; Sheikh Iqbal Ahamed

Addresses: Ubicomp Lab., MSCS Department, Marquette University, 1313 W Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA. ' Ubicomp Lab., MSCS Department, Marquette University, 1313 W Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA. ' Ubicomp Lab., MSCS Department, Marquette University, 1313 W Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA. ' Ubicomp Lab., MSCS Department, Marquette University, 1313 W Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53233, USA

Abstract: Privacy is the most often-cited criticism of context awareness in pervasive environment, and may be the utmost barrier to its enduring success. However, privacy implications associated with pervasive online community-based applications depend on the level of identifiability of the information provided, its possible recipients, and its possible uses. Unfortunately, conventional privacy preservation techniques are not suitable for these types of application. This paper describes our current work in developing a novel privacy sensitive architecture for context obfuscation (PCO) for privacy preservation in pervasive online community-based applications. More specifically, PCO preserves users' privacy by generalising request parameters as well as the context data provided to the application. To support multiple levels of granularity for the released context data, the obfuscation procedure uses an ontological description that states the granularity of object type instances. We have developed and evaluated a contextual instant messaging application (PCO application) in Android platform that incorporates level-based privacy of the user's contextual information. We also evaluate our prototype application through user evaluation survey. The PCO architecture can be extended to be used in diverse online community-based applications.

Keywords: privacy sensitive architecture; context awareness; granularity; e-communities; social networks; privacy protection; pervasive computing; online communities; virtual communities; web based communities; context obfuscation; instant messaging; Androids.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSCCPS.2012.047699

International Journal of Social Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems, 2012 Vol.1 No.3, pp.242 - 267

Published online: 04 Sep 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article