Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies in Social Networks - DPM 2009

Aug 24, 2026

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Social networks rely on privacy settings that let users choose access control policies, shaping which impressions others form. The work explains how privacy can be understood as impression management and how relationship information is encoded into social-graph topology. It focuses on topology-based policies in Facebook-style systems, introducing reflective policy assessment to help users evaluate policy consequences. Tool support is discussed to address policy assessment needs and practical issues for users.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages31

Reading Time1 h 18 min

AccessFree to download

Motivation

Privacy implications of access control policies

Privacy in Social Networks

What is privacy

Privacy and access control policies

User Specified Policies in FSNS

Search, traversal, and access policies

Communication policies

Topology-based Policies

Reflective policy assessment (RPA)

Tool Support for RPA

Issues & Discussions

Work in progress

Visualizing Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies in Social Networks Mohd Anwar ∗ , Philip W. L. Fong∗ , Xue-Dong Yang†, Howard Hamilton† ∗ University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada † University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada DPM 2009 Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 1 / 31 Motivation In social networks, privacy settings allow users to choose access control policies Figure: Privacy Setting in Facebook What are the privacy implications of these policies? How do we help users assess topology-based policies? Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 2 / 31 Related Work Privacy for Impression Management: Goﬀman 1961, Patil & Kobsa 2003 Privacy Preservation Model for Social Networks: Fong, Anwar, & Zhao 2009 Generating Social Graph: Chakrabarti et al. 2007 Visualization (Social Graph/Security Policies): Freeman 2000, Heer & boyd 2005, Reeder et al. 2008 Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 3 / 31 Outline Privacy in Social Networks User Speciﬁed Policies in Facebook-style Social Network Systems (FSNS) Topology-based Policies Reﬂective Policy Assessment (RPA) Tool Support for RPA Issues & Discussions Work in Progress Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 4 / 31 Privacy in Social Networks Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 5 / 31 What is Privacy? Purpose of privacy is impression management ◮ Control the impression that other people form Control over what impression one wants to convey to whom ◮ What proﬁle items to present to whom? ◮ e.g. disclose the sorority photos to only friends, but siteseeing photos to everybody Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 6 / 31 Privacy and Access Control Policies Impression is conveyed according to relationship Relationship can be encoded into the topology of a graph ([e.g. social](e.g. social)[ ](e.g. social)graph) Therefore, topological access control policies help users control impression Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 7 / 31 User Speciﬁed Policies in FSNS Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 8 / 31 Search, Traversal, and Access Policies Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 9 / 31 Communication Policies To initiate a communication primitive Search Policy Traversal Policies of receiver Stage I Traverse Social Graph Global Name Search Communication event occurs Mohd Anwar (UofC) Privacy Implications of Access Control Policies DPM 2009 10 / 31

FAQs

What problem does the document address in social networks?

It examines the privacy implications of user-chosen access control policies and how those policies affect what impressions other people form.

How is privacy conceptualized in the document?

Privacy is framed as impression management, controlling which profile items are shown to whom.

What role do topology-based policies play?

Relationship information is encoded in the topology of a social-graph, so topology-based access control policies help users control impressions.

Aug 24, 2026

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