Title: Privacy and technology challenges for ubiquitous social networking

Authors: Antonio Sapuppo; Boon-Chong Seet

Addresses: Center for Communication, Media and Information Technologies, Aalborg University, Sydhavnsgade 17-19, Frederikskaj 12, Copenhagen 2450, Denmark ' Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Auckland University of Technology, Private Bag 92006, Auckland 1142, New Zealand

Abstract: Ubiquitous social networking (USN) can be seen as an evolution of ubiquitous computing supporting the social well-being of people in their everyday lives. The vision of USN focuses on enhancing social interactions among its participants during users' physical meetings. This target is leading towards important challenges such as social sensing, enabling social networking and privacy protection. In this paper we firstly investigate the methods and technologies for acquisition of the relevant context for promotion of sociability among inhabitants of USN environments. Afterwards, we review architectures and techniques for enabling social interactions between participants. Finally, we identify privacy as the major challenge for networking in USN environments. Consequently, we depict design guidelines and review privacy protection models for facilitating personal information disclosure.

Keywords: privacy protection; ubiquitous computing; information disclosure; context awareness; ubiquitous social networking; USN; design guidelines; sociability; social interactions; personal information.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2015.068127

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2015 Vol.18 No.3, pp.121 - 138

Received: 06 May 2013
Accepted: 02 Sep 2013
Published online: 20 Mar 2015 *

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