Semantically supported Authentication and Privacy in Social Networks

Service access in a ubiquitous computing and pervasive Internet environment has reached a new dimension. It is not longer a question of enabling services for customers, but to design a convenient and trusted service usage. While semantic services open for a description of user preferences, profiles and social groups, privacy handling is not addressed so far. Social communities based on friend of a friend (foaf) principles, Linkedln, or Facebook are open for all registered users, thus data about yourself are spread all-around. This paper presents an architecture to enable social networks to enable privacy, based on the identity of the user. Focus is on the semantic description of user's role in social networks and on securing the access through appropriate authentication mechanisms. Depending on the security requirements of the user, Internet trust mechanisms or mobile-based key exchange mechanisms can be applied. The user-centric approach will enable the user to select an identity provider for the trusted management. A prototype using semantically defined social relationships demonstrates the capabilities of the suggested approach.