Risk Measurement of it Privacy and Security Threat in Social Networking Sites on Users Perspective

Abstract

The measurement of privacy and security risks posed to users when using Social Networking Sites (SNS) is considered a challenging task for social networking users. A fundamental aspect associated with the measurement of risks is that a vast amount of data can easily be gathered virtually by any individual. This study presents a Threatware, a tool that can be used for detecting data loss in SNS.  This was necessitated by the need for a framework that can identify privacy threats and risks as a way of overcoming the problem of data loss affecting most SNS. We also provided an additional functionality on the software tool that could capture risks based on several ancillary threat models.  A critical evaluation of the initial results indicated that an equilibrium existed between the information on privacy threat and its relations that exist among users in SNS. These results rely heavily on users‘ willingness to disclose a significant amount of their settings derived from their friendships on Facebook. The outcome of the study ThreatWare is expected to enhance the detection of data loss as well as provide appropriate actions that can be adopted by users to mitigate privacy and security risks.