And there are three main security objectives of OSNs is privacy, integrity,availability.
The privacy of OSNs encompass user profile privacy, communication privacy, message confidentiality,information disclosure. In some scenarios, privacy calls for default privacy of the information. But not all social networks do it well. Facebook & RenRen is better than QQZone on the feature of privacy now.Because if you have a QQ account and open a QQ Zone, all your information is published publicly in QQ Zone by default.
As a part of integrity, the user's identity and data must be protected against unauthorized modification and tampering.I think this will be a big challenge especially when many people do not log out after using the social networks. This give a chance for different attacks.
There are different angles to understand availability. In OSNs, the availability specially has to include robustness against censorship, and the seizure or hijacking of accounts etc, and has to ensure along with message exchange.
Though some security problems have to be processed by enterprises of social networks, there are some tips relatively easy for you to protect yourself and your business. Be discreet and skeptical on social networks. Never type anything into a profile page, bulletin board, instant message or other type of online electronic form that would expose you to unwanted visitors or the possibility of identify theft or malicious threats. Another important method is check privacy policies. And remember log out the website if you don't use it.
Reference:
http://www.focus.com/fyi/security-risks-social-networks/
http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/security/208401887/10-social-networking-security-trends-to-watch.htm?pgno=2
After reading your blog, I think of two aspects. Firstly, Qzone is exactly not a safe social network. Although there are some policies to be promote to solve some of the security problems, people who have not been authorized by the author can read the diary or something throught many other ways, searching the title on Baidu for instance. People always find out that their diaries have been read by some strangers. And some even post advertisement on Qzone.
回复删除But there is a key difference between Qzone and Renren or Facebook. Renren and Facebook are in real-name system, while Qzone is not. Perhaps this is the reason why security is ignored by Tencent to some degree. Of course these are all my personal opinions.
Indeed, OSN Security is very important as you mentioned in the post.
回复删除I think, for the general users, we should treat anything we see online -- stock tips, advance news, personnel gossip and so on -- with a high degree of skepticism. Since Social network sites are full of useful business information, as well as to substantial amounts of useless disinformation. Some people will lie in order to boost their own agenda, while others will spout unsubstantiated rubbish out of stupidity or sheer ignorance.
Privacy is the most important issue in social networking platform. Obama also said that your words or pictures would be kept forever in the internet. And hence we should keep the sensitive information well and don't enclose our phone number, address into the social platform.
回复删除Right, a community is a virtual society, good guys and bad guys present there. I think we need police in this virtual society too, but just like a society we can't reply all to the police, we need to be aware of ourselves too.
回复删除Well, the main reason for why I leave QQzone is its low efficiency when loading, rather than information disclosure. Actually you can set the personal privacy as you like in QQzone to prevent information published.
回复删除And I believe when cloud computing (e.g. QQzone)continues its adoption, both vendors and customers will have to better understand the questions to ask and the services to provide in order to maintain security.
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