Social Networking

Abstract

As the social technology matured in recent years, so did the threat landscape of the online medium. Fears about breaches of privacy and personal information security seem to dominate the list of concerns of social media users described in literature. Popular press continually reports cases of inadvertent and malicious information disclosure and breaches, cyberbullying, and stalking. Yet, social networking sites proliferated into all areas of human activity. The factor causing this phenomenon lies in the trusted nature of networks and the sense of trustworthiness of this easy-to-use technology. The formation of trust into social technology has attracted much attention, and this chapter offers an overview of the trust predictors in social settings. It continues with a retrospective into the threat landscape and the use of personalisation by social networking services to counter some of these threats. Further research directions are discussed.