Privacy Protection on Social Networking Sites

Today social networking sites such as Face book, MySpace, and Twitter have found global fame and have become important part of a modern life. Millions of people throughout the world have joined these networks and share a great part of their information over these networks every day. The information that users share on these networks could be misused by the providers of networks or third parties. For example, their private information could be disclosed in online environment or provided to companies for advertisement purposes, or used in other ways. Hence, these networks have become an easy platform of accessing the persons’ data and the personal data of users and some people associated with them in these networks are threatened. To control these threats, attempts have been initiated in international and national levels but these attempts have not yet achieved favorable and reliable results. In our country, although threats from these networks have jeopardized security of some users, unfortunately the concerns over violating privacy by these networks or associated people are not yet a serious concern. Hence, the present paper tires to explain the concept of social networking sites and the way they work (chapter 1), and then study the potential threats that may arise against privacy of people through membership in these networks, and the strategies for protection of people against these threats (chapter 2).