Unit-1 (Code KCA 031)

Introduction
to
Online Social Networks
Faculty:
Dr. Brijesh Kr. Gupta
Professor, MCA Dept.
CoE- Cyber Security
Introduction:
Professor J. A. Barnes has introduced the term
"Social Network" in 1967 to describe the
associations of people drawn together by family,
work, hobby etc.; for emotional, instrumental,
appraisal and information support.

In its simplest form, a social network is a map of the

relevant ties between the individuals, organizations,
nations etc. being studied.

With the evolution of digital age, Internet provides a

greater scope of implementing social networks
online. Online social net­ works have broader and
easier coverage of members worldwide to share
information and resources.
Definition:
Social networks can be described
as web applications. People may
use social networking services for
different reasons: to network with
new contacts, reconnect with
former friends, maintain current
relationships, build or promote a
business or project, participate in
discussions about a certain topic,
or just have fun meeting and
interacting with other users.
• Status update networks. These types of social networks are
designed to allow users to post short status updates in order
to communicate with other users quickly. For example,
Twitter focuses its services on providing instantaneous,
short updates. These networks are designed to broadcast
information quickly and publicly, though there may be
privacy settings to restrict access to status updates.

• Location networks. With the advent of GPS-enabled cellular

phones, location networks are growing in popularity. These
networks are designed to broadcast one’s real-time location,
either as public information or as an update viewable to
authorized contacts. Many of these networks are built to
interact with other social networks, so that an update made
to a location network could (with proper authorization) post
to one’s other social networks. Some examples of location
networks include Brightkite, Foursquare, and Google
Latitude.
• Content-sharing networks. These networks are designed as
platforms for sharing content, such as music, photographs
and videos. When these websites introduce the ability to
create personal profiles, establish contacts and interact
with other users through comments, they become social
networks as well as content hubs. Some popular content
sharing networks include the sixty one, YouTube and Flickr.

• Shared-interest networks. Some social networks are built

around a common interest or geared to a specific group of
people. These networks incorporate features from other
types of social networks but are slanted toward a subset of
individuals, such as those with similar hobbies, educational
backgrounds, political affiliations, ethnic backgrounds,
religious views, sexual orientations or other defining
interests. Examples of such networks include deviant ART,
LinkedIn, Black Planet, and Goodreads.
 What Is Social Networking?
● Social networking refers to using internet-based social
media sites to stay connected with friends, family,
colleagues, or customers. Social networking can have a
social purpose, a business purpose, or both through sites
like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and
Pinterest.
● Social networking is also a significant opportunity for
marketers seeking to engage customers. Facebook
remains the largest and most popular social network,
with 2 billion people using the platform daily, as of Feb 1,
2023.1 Other popular platforms in the U.S. are Instagram,
X, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Pinterest.
● Social networking involves the development
and maintenance of personal and business
relationships using technology. This is done
through the use of social networking sites, such
as Facebook, Instagram, and X.

● These sites allow people and corporations to

connect with one another so they can develop
relationships and share information, ideas, and
messages.
 A Brief History of Social Media
In less than a generation, social media has evolved
from direct electronic information exchange, to
virtual gathering place, to retail platform, to vital
21st­century marketing tool.
 How did it begin?
 How has social media affected the lives of
billions of people?
 How have businesses adapted to the digital
consumer lifestyle?
 How do marketing professionals use social
media?
It’s all part of the story of social media’s ongoing
evolution.
 Pre-Internet Roots
In a sense, social media began on May 24, 1844, with a
series of electronic dots and dashes tapped out by hand on a
telegraph machine.
The first electronic message from Baltimore to Washington,
D.C., proved Samuel Morse understood the historic
ramifications of his scientific achievement: “What hath God
wrought?” he wrote.
While the roots of digital communication run deep, most
contemporary accounts of the modern origins of today’s
internet and social media point to the emergence in 1969 of
the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network — the
ARPANET.
● This early digital network, created by the United
States Department of Defense, allowed
scientists at four interconnected universities to
share software, hardware, and other data.
 The Launch of Social Sites
● In the 1980s and ’90s, according to “The History of Social
Networking” on the technology news site Digital Trends,
the internet’s growth enabled the introduction of online
communication services such as CompuServe, America
Online, and Prodigy. They introduced users to digital
communication through email, bulletin board messaging,
and real-time online chatting.
● This gave rise to the earliest social media networks,
beginning with the short-lived Six Degrees profile
uploading service in 1997.
● This service was followed in 2001 by Friendster. These
rudimentary platforms attracted millions of users and
enabled email address registration and basic online
networking.
● Weblogs, or blogs, another early form of digital
social communication, began to gain popularity
with the 1999 launch of the Live Journal External
link publishing site.
● This coincided with the launch of the Blogger
publishing platform by the tech company Pyra
Labs, which was purchased by Google in 2003.
● In 2002, LinkedIn was founded as a networking
site for career-minded professionals.
● By 2020, it had grown to more than 675 million
users worldwide. It remains the social media site
of choice for job seekers as well as human
resources managers searching for qualified
candidates.
● Two other major forays into social media
collapsed after a burst of initial success. In
2003, Myspace launched. By 2006, it was the
most visited website on the planet, spurred by
users’ ability to share new music directly on
their profile pages.
● By 2008, it was eclipsed by Facebook. In 2011,
Myspace was purchased by musician Justin
Timberlake for $35 million, but it has since
become a social media after thought.
● Google’s attempt to elbow its way into the
social media landscape launched in 2012.
● A rocky existence came to an end in 2018,
after the private information of nearly 500,000
Google+ users was compromised by a data
security breach.
 Modern Social Media Outlets
Today’s social media landscape is populated by a
suite of services that jockey for the attention of more
than 5 billion mobile device users world wide. Here
is an overview of the most prominent social media
networks of 2020:
● Facebook
● Launched in 2004 by Harvard student Mark
Zuckerberg, it has nearly 1.7 billion users —
including 69% of U.S. adults, according to Pew
Research.
● HubSpot: Facebook Marketing
● Reddit
● Launched in 2005 by Massachusetts 20-
somethings Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian as a
news-sharing platform, its 300 million users have
transformed Reddit into a combination news
aggregation/social commentary site. Its popularity
is based on the ability to “up-vote” and “down-
vote” user posts.
● Twitter
● Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz
Stone, and others as a microblogging site, by 2020,
22% of U.S. adults were Twitter users, according
to Pew Research.
● Instagram
Founded in 2010 by Stanford graduate Kevin
Systrom as a photo-sharing site and purchased by
Facebook in 2012, Instagram has more than 1
billion users worldwide.
● Pinterest

Founded in 2010 by iPhone app developer Ben

Silbermann as a visual “pin board,” became a
publicly traded company in 2019 and has more
than 335 million active monthly users.
● Snapchat
Founded in 2011 by a trio of Stanford students — Evan
Spiegel, Reggie Brown, and Bobby Murphy — this video-
sharing service introduced the concept of “stories,” or
serialized short videos, and “filters,” run for informative
digital effects, often based on location.

● TikTok
Founded in 2016 by Chinese tech company Bytem Dance,
this short-form video-sharing site was merged with the
U.S.-based mobile app Musical.ly in 2018 and became
popular with American teens and young adults. As of early
2020, it had more than 800 million users worldwide.
 Benefits of Social Media

Organization’s
Strengthens & Builds
message will reach a Engages Constituents
Relationships
wider audience

Mobilizes constituents
Easier and broader
Facilitates around issues that are
dissemination of
Collaboration important to them
information
and creates advocates
 Purposes

Education
There are endless benefits of the social media for the
teachers and students. With the help of social media, the
students can easily educate the professionals and
experts in the field.

Connectivity
The biggest benefit of the social media is connectivity.
The users can connect with the people from any part of
the world.

Promotion
The users can promote their business to a bigger
audience. It doesn’t matter they have an offline or online
business, the social media can help them in many ways.

Help
The users can share their issues with the online
community for getting help and suggestions.
Security Issues in On Line
Social Media
About the Problem:
As the area of online social networking develops and many
online services add social features to their offerings, the
definition of online social networking services broadens.
Online social networking services range from social interaction­
centered sites such as Facebook or MySpace, to information
dissemination­centric services such as Twitter or Google
Buzz, to social interaction features added to existing sites and
services such as Flickr or Amazon.
Each of these services has different characteristics of social
interaction and different vulnerabilities to attack.
The value of online social networking sites stems from the fact
that people spend large amounts of time on these networks
updating their personal profiles, browsing for social or
professional interactions, or taking part in social­oriented online
applications and events
People nowadays have become immersed in their
preferred online social environments, creating an
exciting entanglement between their real and virtual
identities.
However, this immersion also holds great peril for
users, their friends, and their employers, and may
even endanger national security.
There is much information in the patterns of
communication between users and their peers.
These patterns are affected by many relationship
and context factors and can be used in a reverse
direction to infer the relationship and context.
Later on, these relationships can be further used to deduce
additional private information which was intended to remain
undisclosed.
In other cases, this problem can become even worse due to
the (false) assumption
of users that information marked as “private” will remain
private and will not be disclosed by the network. Indeed,
although the operators of social networks rarely betray the
confidence of their users, no security mechanism is perfect.
Because these networks often use standard (and not
necessarily updated) security methods, a determined attacker
can sometimes gain access to such unauthorized information.
The combination of sensitive private information managed by
users who are not security­aware in an environment that is
not hermetically sealed is a sure cause of frequent leaks of
private information and identity thefts.
Problem in Organizational Perspectives:
This problem becomes even more threatening
when viewed from the corporate (or even national)
perspective. Users who possess sensitive
commercial or security related information are
expected to be under strict control in their
workplaces.
However, while interacting virtually in social
networks, these same people often tend to ignore
precautions due to a false sense of intimacy and
privacy, all the while being unaware of the damage
their naive behavior may cause.
Because it is hard (and sometimes illegal) to
monitor the behavior of online social network
users, these platforms constitute a significant
threat to the safety and privacy of sensitive
information.
Hard to detect and almost impossible to prevent,
leaks of business, military, or government data
through social networks could become the
security epidemic of the twenty-first century
 Security-Guidelines for OSNs User
• Nowadays, online social media and network have
become an integral part of everyone’s life. As the
reputation of these social sites grows, so do the risks of
using them.
• The number of users increases exponentially every
year. So, it becomes a necessity to secure users on
these platforms.
• Below are some security-guidelines for users which
they can practice keeping themselves reasonably
secure. We have tried to give security-guidelines in two
ways. First, it has been described in a general form and
then it is described platform-wise.
 For Social Connection Platform
(1)Users should learn about the privacy and security setting for
different social media platforms and use them. Each platform has its
own privacy and security setting. Every platform provides settings,
configuration, and privacy sections to limit who and what groups can
see various aspects of the user’s profile. The privacy setting provided
by the sites as default should not be adopted as it is.
(2)The more details provided, the easier it is for an adversary to use
that information to steal identity or to commit other cybercrimes.
Thus, information sharing should be limited.
(3)Before accepting a friend request, one should
completely check the profile of the requester. One can
make different groups for sharing different kinds of
information like a different group for colleagues and family.
(4)Before posting any information on the profile,
employees should know their company’s policy over
sharing any content online on social networks.
Reasons for Social Media Security
Issues:
Trust Management in Online Social
Networks
In recent years, there is a dramatic
growth in number and popularity of
online social networks.
There are many networks available with
more than I00 million regis­ tered users
such as Facebook, MySpace, QZone,
Windows Live Spaces etc.
within the networks about an item which
may be a product or service.
People may connect, discover and
share by using these online social
networks.
The ex­ponential growth of online
communities in the area of social
networks attracts the attention of the
researchers about the importance of
managing trust in online en­vironment.
Users of the online social networks
may share their experiences and
opinions
The user faces the problem of
evaluating trust in a service or
service provider before making a
choice.
Recommendations may be
received through a chain of
friends net­ work, so the
problem for the user is to be
able to evaluate various types of
trust opinions and
recommendations.
● We have seen that trust plays an extremely
important role in online social communities, as
well as in people’s lives; however, there are
some challenges in applying trust in online
social communities First of all, we have to
represent trust in a computational model.
● Trust is not easy to model in a computational
way because of its subjective property.
● Also, it cannot be applied directly in online
social communities due to different features
that online social communities have from
traditional social networks.
• For example in real life, people only have a
limited number of friends to evaluate, but this
number explodes in online social communities.
On Facebook and Twitter, users can have
thousands of friends.
• Apart from this, in real life, trust is developed
slowly over time, based on face-to-face social
experiences; however, this is very difficult in
online social communities due to the large
number of potential friends.
• Therefore, trust in online social communities
must be computational such that it can be
processed by computers.
 Identity Management
in
On line Social Networks
Identity management (IdM) generally describes
the management of user identities and their rights
to access resources throughout the identity life
cycle, according to users' rights and restrictions
associated with the established identities. Identity
management systems provide services and
technologies for controlling user access to critical
information.
● Among these services and technologies, the
most well known include Active Directory,
Identity Providers, Digital Identities, Password
Managers, Single Sign-on, Security Tokens,
Security Token Services (STS), Open ID, WS
Security, WS-Trust, SAML 2.0, and OAuth.
● The development of Web 2.0 technologies has
led to the definition of the concept of Online
Identity Management (OIM), whose meaning it
twofold.
• When it refers to online image management or
online personal branding or personal reputation
management (PRM), OIM is a set of methods for
generating a distinguished Web presence of a
person on the Internet.
That presence could be reflected in any kind of
content that refers to the person, including news,
participation in blogs and forums, personal
websites, social media presence, pictures, videos,
etc.
But online identity management also refers to identity
disclosure and identity theft, and has particularly been
developed in the management of online identity in social
network services.
In OSNs, aspects belonging to both meanings constitute an
integral part of the identity construction process on these sites.
Due to impression management, i.e., "the process through
which people try to control the impressions other people form
of them"-one of whose objectives is in particular to increase the
online reputation of the person-users provide a lot of personal
information concerning their identities.
This identity disclosure brings to mind several identity attacks
which are particularly insidious in online social networks.
Sensitive personal data" means such personal
data, which may, reveal, be related to, or
constitute:
• (i) financial data;
• (ii) health data;
• (iii) official identification
• (vi) biometric data;
• (vii) genetic data;
• (viii) transgender status;
• (x) caste or tribe;
• (xi) religious or political belief or affiliation; or
• (xii) any other data categorized as sensitive
personal data under section 15.
 What Information is Public?
There are two kinds of information that can be gathered about a user from a
social network: information that is shared and information gathered through
electronic tracking.

Information a User Shares

Information a user shares may include:

• Photos and other media.
• Age and gender.
• Biographical information (education, employment history, hometown, etc.).
• Status updates (also known as posts).
• Contacts.
• Interests.
• Geographical location.
Information Becomes Public in a Variety
of Ways:
• A user may choose to post information as “public”
(without restricting access via available privacy
settings).
• Certain information may be publicly visible by
default. In some situations, a user may be able to
change the privacy settings to make the information
“private” so that only approved users can view it.
• Other information must remain public; the user does
not have an option to restrict access to it.
• A social network can change its privacy policy at any
time without a user’s permission. Content that was
posted with restrictive privacy settings may become
visible when a privacy policy is altered.
Data Collection from Social
Networks
Data Collection:
 Individual­level social network data are critical to
understanding the dynamics that shape many important
social outcomes.
 Survey research is one of the most common methods for
collecting these data from individuals.
 However, there are a number of challenges that this
particular task, mapping social networks, poses to survey­
based data collection methods and new tools and research
are needed to maximize the accuracy of these data.
Facebook Audience Size ( in Millions)
 What types of data do social media platforms
collect?
● When users create a social media account and use the
platform, they leave a digital footprint on the internet.
Companies collect personal information, along with
interests and locations, from the platform by using
tracking cookies, geo fencing and cross-site tracking.
● When users sign up for an account, they agree to the
terms and conditions, which enable social media platforms
to collect data.
● Even if an account is private, advertisers and scammers
can get sensitive data, such as the following:
● status updates, including work, life and relationship events;
● religious beliefs;
● profile information, including name, contact information and
birthdate;
● location data, including your hometown, check-in locations,
previous cities lived or exact address;
● personal interests, such as buying history and website
interactions;
● shared content, such as status updates, photos and videos;
● engagement on social media, including likes, shares or
comments on other posts;
● employment information, including current or past jobs; and
● personal identifiers, such as age, race and gender.
● Social media posts can reveal attitudinal data, which
captures feelings and emotions. This data measures
how users feel about certain messages and content.
Attitudinal data can be used with surveys, interviews,
reviews, feedback, preferences and complaints.
● Preference data on social media discloses how a user
supports various ideas, activities and content, such as
politics, food, entertainment genres and religious
beliefs.
 Data
• Data analysis is a major part of today’s technological world. With emerging
inventions and communication media, social media has become an easy way t
Analysis
exchange information and ideas. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter
Instagram, Linkden, Youtube, Snapchat and so on.
Analysis
Challenges of Online Social Network:

• Spamming. Spamming on online social networks is

quite prevalent
• Privacy. Main article: Privacy concerns with social
networking services
• Notifications
• Access to information
• Impact on employability
• Potential for misuse
• Unauthorized access
• Risk for child safety
Pitfalls of Online Social Network:
● Lacks Emotional Connection
● Gives People a License to be Hurtful
● Decreases Face-to-Face Communication Skills
● Conveys Inauthentic Expression of Feelings
● Diminishes Understanding and Thoughtfulness
● Causes Face-to-Face Interactions to Feel
Disconnected
● Facilitates Laziness

The more time spent on social media can lead

to cyberbullying, social anxiety, depression, and
exposure to content that is not age appropriate.
Social Media is addicting.
Do’s of Social Media:

Provide value Be genuine

Strategize Listen
BE CREATIVE
 Social Network APIs
• Social media websites were initially designed to
confined user experience within four walls of their
web page. However, to increase their user base
and to expand beyond only desktop accessible
websites, these social networks started developing
API.
• Those who are into social media programming
must be aware of term Social Network API
(Application Programming Interface), that majority
of social media platforms are providing these days
for a developer to interact with the social network,
get some demographic data, find out details about
a users, posts etc, or to create a new service like
Tweetdeck (Twitter).
 Application Programming Interface
(API)
• This is a platform provided by the social networks
allowing other applications and websites to pull the social
media data and integrate with their site or application.
Since social network is itself providing this platform so we
can obviously assume that it’s just a puppet.
• They are providing limited features, call or queries that
can be performed by developer and they require
developer to generate an API Key before using the API.
This key is like your Aadhaar Card.
• If someone does anything wrong or we can say if
someone try to do anything malicious using an API,
he/she will be caught using this API Key.
 Developments Leads by API Access
• Developers used API to develop browser-based
games or game applications that allow users to sign
in using social media credentials and thus allowing
the user to compete with any other person using
that platform.
• Have you ever seen Candy Crush Request on
Facebook Notification Page, or ever wondered why
games like Subway surfers allow the user to get
more points/coins by signing up using Facebook
credentials? Just to get the user social data to be
more effective in targeting the customer
• These days barely there is any website or web
application that doesn’t provide the option to sign-in
using the social media account (Facebook, Google etc.)
credentials.
• The main motive is to get the social media data, for
advertising their website or application using user’s
account or to display advertisements on the website or
application as per the demographic data collected from
linked social media account.
• Have you ever seen a Google Map embedded on a web
page? This all is feasible with the advent of Google Maps
API, that allows developers to embed Google Maps on
any webpage or any page of an application using
JavaScript or Flash Interface.
• This API is designed to work on both desktop and mobile
devices.
 Major Players:
Major Players in the market like Facebook, Google etc
released the first iteration of their API in the early 2000s.
• Ebay released its first developer toolset in 2000 in the
hope that it will expand its business but it was not until
2005 that the API was fully open for the use.
• Amazon released its first API in 2002 allowing developers
to extract data regarding wishlist of a customer, product
reviews etc. Since then Amazon has also released API for
its web services and Alexa.
• Google has released first API for its search engine in April
2002 allowing developers to do approx 1000 automated
search queries. Today there are thousands of API are
available for different google services. Thus, resulting in
thousands of applications.
• Facebook launched its API in the year 2006. Facebook Developer API
was one of the first API to be released as platform specific API. Today
Facebook provides Graph API with the Open Stream API being the
latest.
• YouTube first released it’s API in 2008. It lets you add YouTube videos
to your website or application, analyse a YouTube channels
demographics. YouTube API includes YouTube Data API, YouTube
Analytics API, YouTube Live Streaming API and many more.
• Twitter API was first released in September 2006. Twitter offers two
sets of API: REST API and Search API. REST API allows to access core
Twitter Data and the job of Search API is to provide access to search
and Trends Data.
• Instagram API was first released in April 2014. It allows developer to
build applications that can analyse user posts and help users to
manage their own posts.

There are so many other social media sites like Pinterest, Flickr, LinkedIn
etc. Each having their own API’s, supporting developer to build
application that can integrate data from these social media sites on a
website or in an application.
  Report for Security and Privacy in Social
Networks / 2015­07
 India: The Personal Data Protection Bill 2019
 On Line Related Research Papers
 Gupta Brijesh Kr., FDP Session on “ Data
Protection & Social Media”, 22nd Dec., 2020
Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology, Indore
References:  Gupta Brijesh Kr., “ GDPR & Governance”,
ITU Course on Cyber Security for
Enterprises , 10th ­15th Oct., 2019, India
 Gupta, Brijesh Kr., Lecture Series on
“Securing Cyber Space”
 Pics from Google Search Engine
 Contact Details

brijesh.gupta@miet.ac.in
Mob. +91-9958598789