Search results
1 – 10 of over 15000The purpose of this paper is to analyse the problem of privacy disclosure of third party applications in online social networks (OSNs) through Facebook, investigate the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the problem of privacy disclosure of third party applications in online social networks (OSNs) through Facebook, investigate the limitations in the existing models to protect users privacy and propose a permission-based access control (PBAC) model, which gives users complete control over users’ data when accessing third party applications.
Design/methodology/approach
A practical model based on the defined permission policies is proposed to manage users information accessed by third party applications and improve user awareness in sharing sensitive information with them. This model is a combination of interfaces and internal mechanisms which can be adopted by any OSN having similar architecture to Facebook in managing third party applications, without much structural changes. The model implemented in Web interface connects with Facebook application programming interface and evaluates its efficacy using test cases.
Findings
The results show that the PBAC model can facilitate user awareness about privacy risks of data passed on to third party applications and allow users who are more concerned about their privacy from releasing such information to those applications.
Research limitations/implications
The study provides further research in protecting users’ privacy in OSNs and thus avoid the risks associated with that, thereby increasing users’ trust in using OSNs.
Originality/value
The research has proven to be useful in improving user awareness on the risk associated with sharing private information on OSNs, and the practically implemented PBAC model guarantees full user privacy from unwanted disclosure of personal information to third party applications.
Details
Keywords
This study attempts to develop an efficient concept to mitigate the risks of social engineering in the era of social networks. For instance friend requests on Facebook are often…
Abstract
Purpose
This study attempts to develop an efficient concept to mitigate the risks of social engineering in the era of social networks. For instance friend requests on Facebook are often accepted blindly, thus granting unknown people access to profile details. These problems fuel requirements for an application, developed in this study, that raises awareness of security issues in Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
The “Theory of Planned Behaviour” (TPB), a model from psychology to predict behaviour, is used as a theoretical foundation for the application. Attitudes, perceived behavioural control and social norms are the main variables of this model. Social norms can be massively affected by the Facebook friends and therefore an application is developed which uses this in order to raise awareness.
Findings
The application propagated itself virally. Out of 117 users of the application, 15 took action to change the public‐search option visibility from public to private. The use of the application took on average 10.5 minutes.
Originality/value
Applications that scan a Facebook profile for fishy content already exist. However, at the time of writing this paper, no application specifically written against social engineering was known to the author.
Details
Keywords
Konstantinos Mourtzoukos, Ioannis T. Christou and Sofoklis Efremidis
This paper aims to report on lessons learnt from operating a location‐aware mobile social networking application, and critical functionalities that were deemed necessary in order…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on lessons learnt from operating a location‐aware mobile social networking application, and critical functionalities that were deemed necessary in order to provide a pleasant user experience. As a result of user feedback, the authors enhanced their social networking system, G2G, with functionalities such as login with Facebook.com credentials without the need to sign up to their system first, and a much improved localization system that works across different mobile operators. Mobile advertisement was included for enhancing the user experience.
Design/methodology/approach
A modular approach has been followed for the system design. The original G2G system interfaced cleanly with the Facebook application programming interfaces (APIs) and the mobile advertisement subsystem through wrapper components.
Findings
The result was a much improved user experience as existing Facebook subscriptions facilitated new users to use the system. Mobile advertisement functionalities were seen as an essential add‐on. The aforementioned functionalities, combined with the ability to upload/search/download location‐aware multimedia notes, and a back‐end interface that allows advertisers to add location‐aware, personalized content, resulted in a significantly enhanced user experience as evidenced by higher user active participation to the system.
Originality/value
The enhanced system integrates seamelessly with Facebook (facilitating thus the entry of new users) and with a mobile advertisement platform, and provides for advanced security functionalities. Moreover, it supports Android‐based smart‐phones.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic use of social media and chat applications of women entrepreneurs to promote their businesses.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategic use of social media and chat applications of women entrepreneurs to promote their businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
Because of the nature of the study and dearth of sufficient data in the Middle Eastern society on the women entrepreneurship, this study employed a qualitative research methodology. The research comprised of 20 in-depth interviews with immigrant women entrepreneurs in the United Arab Emirates. They were identified through personal contacts and referrals.
Findings
All the expatriate women interviewed are using social media and chat applications to promote their business. Facebook is used for brand creation and WhatsApp is used as a direct marketing tool to evoke purchase response. Though traditional promotional tools are far from redundant, their role is more supplementary. The increasing trend is a combination of traditional tools and digital tools. Digital tools seem to have an upper hand in their business promotions.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to SME sector in one industry and in one country. The qualitative nature of this study could affect the generalizability of the results. A more extensive study is needed and future research should be more diverse including widening the selection of respondents, industries and countries.
Originality/value
This study is a novel attempt to gauge an in-depth understanding of modern communication tools. It looks specifically at the integrative strategies pursued by the immigrant women entrepreneurs using Facebook and WhatsApp.
Details
Keywords
This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will…
Abstract
This chapter takes a look at the Social Web. Humanities scholars are, by and large, a fairly social group. Attend any of the Modern Language Association conferences and you will be inundated with invitations to attend events hosted by publishers, groups within MLA, universities, and alumni organizations. The way we now include apps as an inherent part of our socialization, however, is changing and evolving as a result of some of the tools that are to be associated with the digital humanities, albeit not necessarily as apparently so as some others. This chapter explores the familiar players like Facebook™, Google+™, Twitter™, and others and discusses how they are being used by those in the field, contextualizing them within a variety of disciplines in the humanities through case studies while situating the category alongside theories that make sense of their use. Not as commonly used in academic social networks are vlogging applications along with student blog sites, which are also examined in this chapter. It is in this and subsequent chapters where augmented reality enhancements will be used. Please follow the directions at the beginning of Chapter 2 to access these additions.
Mousa Abu Kashef, Athula Ginige and Ana Hol
The purpose of this paper was to develop a framework of working-together relations and investigate ways to enhance working-together relations among people, organisations…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to develop a framework of working-together relations and investigate ways to enhance working-together relations among people, organisations, communities and neighbourhoods using working-together applications. Today, people in communities, neighbourhoods and constituencies often work together in a coalition of public, private and non-profit institutions. The technology used today has enabled new forms of communications and collaboration. The rapid growth of mobile technologies and interactive, collaborative applications based on Web technologies has enabled the development of new approaches to derive and share organisational and local knowledge. Not all of these applications have succeeded; after a certain time, users tend to stop using online applications that do not assist them in developing collaborative practices with their team members.
Design/methodology/approach
To better understand the essential characteristics of a successful online application that effectively supports people to work together, the authors undertook an inductive analysis of related literature and existing social media application.
Findings
By combining and categorising the findings, it was possible to articulate the characteristics associated with four identified categories of working-together relations: networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration. The study also identified essential activities that are performed in each working-together category and the factors that enable successful working-together relations: trust, risk and rewards.
Research limitations/implications
Future studies will look into how applications could be further enhanced, so that, for example, an application that is currently classified as “coordination” could be improved and the required characteristics of “collaboration” could be met.
Practical implications
It is expected that the framework derived will assist in the design of successful online applications to support different categories of working-together relations.
Originality/value
The main contribution of this study is a new framework that can now be used to identify how effective an existing application can be in assisting the working-together relations.
Details
Keywords
Andrew Harris and Susan Lessick
The purpose of this paper is to describe applications, gadgets, and profiles that libraries have developed and distributed through the Facebook, iGoogle, and MySpace communities.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe applications, gadgets, and profiles that libraries have developed and distributed through the Facebook, iGoogle, and MySpace communities.
Design/methodology/approach
provides a general review.
Findings
Growing number of libraries and library‐related organizations are creating practical tools using Web 2.0 technologies.
Originality/value
Librarians need to keep abreast of and experiment with these new methods of packaging and delivering information.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Library and Information Science (LIS) students' patterns of Facebook use are affected by personality characteristics (e.g…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether Library and Information Science (LIS) students' patterns of Facebook use are affected by personality characteristics (e.g. extroversion, introversion, self‐esteem) and by their perceptions about Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
Different questionnaires were distributed to 140 LIS students in a prominent LIS department in Israel.
Findings
The present research revealed that personality characteristics as well as gender, level of education and age influence both LIS students' patterns of Facebook use, and their perceptions about Facebook.
Practical implications
LIS educators should expose MA and PhD students more to social networking sites, enabling them to experience their advantages and disadvantages in the personal as well as professional realms. This exposure may cause these students to use social networks in their future work as librarians or information scientists, understanding that these platforms can serve as an additional channel of communication with their patrons.
Originality/value
The findings emphasize the importance of individual differences in technology use and acceptance, and may lead to further research in this field.
Details
Keywords
Sovantharith Seng, Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen and Matthew Wright
A huge amount of personal and sensitive data are shared on Facebook, which makes it a prime target for attackers. Adversaries can exploit third-party applications connected to a…
Abstract
Purpose
A huge amount of personal and sensitive data are shared on Facebook, which makes it a prime target for attackers. Adversaries can exploit third-party applications connected to a user’s Facebook profiles (i.e. Facebook apps) to gain access to this personal information. Users’ lack of knowledge and the varying privacy policies of these apps make them further vulnerable to information leakage. However, little has been done to identify mismatches between users’ perceptions and the privacy policies of Facebook apps. This paper aims to address this challenge in the work.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a lab study with 31 participants, where the authors received data on how they share information on Facebook, their Facebook-related security and privacy practices and their perceptions on the privacy aspects of 65 frequently-used Facebook apps in terms of data collection, sharing and deletion. The authors then compared participants’ perceptions with the privacy policy of each reported app. Participants also reported their expectations about the types of information that should not be collected or shared by any Facebook app.
Findings
The analysis reveals significant mismatches between users’ privacy perceptions and reality (i.e. privacy policies of Facebook apps), where the authors identified over-optimism not only in users’ perceptions of information collection but also in their self-efficacy in protecting their information in Facebook despite experiencing negative incidents in the past.
Originality/value
To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study on the gap between users’ privacy perceptions around Facebook apps and reality. The findings from this study offer direction for future research to address that gap through designing usable, effective and personalized privacy notices to help users to make informed decisions about using Facebook apps.
Details
Keywords
This paper investigates the mechanics of multimedia tie maintenance, with a particular emphasis upon social network sites (SNSs) and their uses and gratifications. We present…
Abstract
This paper investigates the mechanics of multimedia tie maintenance, with a particular emphasis upon social network sites (SNSs) and their uses and gratifications. We present results from a national sample of American adults (N = 571) of all ages, investigating the associations of several attitudinal and social variables with multimedia tie maintenance. We find that Facebook is used to maintain social ties at rates comparable to other media and is increasingly used to connect with close ties, contrary to previous literature. We also uncover highly significant patterns of “expressive” and “instrumental” engagement, isolating distinct expressive/instrumental orientations toward digital media in general and Facebook specifically. Respondents who displayed an expressive pattern of engagement with Facebook did not use non-SNS media to maintain ties any less frequently than those who do not use Facebook expressively. Respondents who displayed an instrumental pattern of engagement with Facebook meanwhile, supplemented their lack of SNS use to maintain ties by using other media more frequently for this purpose. This paper contributes to the literatures of media multiplexity, networked individualism, uses and gratifications theory, and social capital through SNSs. It makes a significant contribution to understanding the psychological and social gratifications of digital media, and their relationship to patterns of multimedia tie maintenance.
Details