Calculation of account reachability risk for users having multiple SNS accounts from user’s profile and regional information
International Journal of Web Information Systems
ISSN: 1744-0084
Article publication date: 20 April 2015
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to argue that social networking service users should be vigilant in protecting the relationship between multiple accounts.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors propose the use of account reachability, a measure of privacy risk which demonstrates the possibility of a stranger finding a user’s private account based on information in their public account. In addition, they present ARChecker, a tool to calculate the value of account reachability. ARChecker also provides advice on how to modify the user’s profiles and messages to decrease the privacy risk.
Findings
The system very simply checks account reachability and shows the result and reasons for accessibility to personal information. From the results, users can learn how to protect themselves from privacy risk by taking certain measures.
Originality/value
This paper proposes account reachability, a new measure of privacy risk, and presents ARChecker, a tool to calculate the value of account reachability.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
© Yoshikuni & Watanabe
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24700088.
Citation
Yoshikuni, A. and Watanabe, C. (2015), "Calculation of account reachability risk for users having multiple SNS accounts from user’s profile and regional information", International Journal of Web Information Systems, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 120-138. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWIS-03-2014-0010
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2015, Authors