Title: Besieged privacy in social networking services

Authors: Shujun Dong; Xingan Li

Addresses: China University of Political Science and Law, Xitucheng Road 25, Haidian District, Beijing, 100088, China ' School of Governance, Law and Society, Tallinn University, Narva MNT 29, Tallinn, 10120, Estonia

Abstract: The aim of current paper is to investigate the risks of illegal use of personal information brought about by the social networking services (SNSs). The principal theme considered in this paper is that the SNSs, in front of both conventional and unconventional offenders, have induced worry about unlawful access to accounts, disclosure and infringement of privacy, as well as misuse and abuse of anonymity. On the grounds that there are more sensitive information and clues and traces to daily activities and movements, it is uncomplicated for possible malefactors to select possible victims of varieties of offences. The article concluded that social networking services facilitated both traditional and untraditional privacy-related crimes with both traditional and untraditional scheme, and reviewed alternative solutions to privacy protection and their concomitant dilemmas. An international initiative might be more realistic for coordinating national divergences.

Keywords: social networking services; SNS; privacy-related crimes; property-related crimes; anonymity abuse; real-name systems; social networking sites; personal information; privacy protection; privacy preservation; privacy disclosure; privacy infringement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2016.077447

International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 2016 Vol.8 No.3, pp.224 - 233

Received: 11 Jun 2015
Accepted: 02 Feb 2016
Published online: 30 Jun 2016 *

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