Overview of Privacy in Social Networking Sites (SNS)

Social Networking Sites (SNS) have become an integral part of communication and life style of people in today‟s world. Because of the wide range of services offered by SNSs mostly for free of cost, these sites are attracting the attention of all possible Internet users. Most importantly, users from all age groups have become members of SNSs. Since many of the users are not aware of the data thefts associated with information sharing, they freely share their personal information with SNSs. Therefore, SNSs may be used for investigating users‟ character and social habits by familiar or even unknown persons and agencies. Such commercial and social scenario, has led to number of privacy and security threats. Though, all major issues in SNSs need to be addressed, by SNS providers, privacy of SNS users is the most crucial. And therefore, focus of this paper is on „privacy in SNSs‟. Different ways of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) leakages from SNSs, information revelation to third-party domains without user consent and privacy related threats associated with such information sharing are discussed in this paper. This comprehensive overview on privacy in SNSs will definitely help in raising user awareness about sharing data and managing their privacy with SNSs. It will also help SNS providers to rethink about their privacy policies.