Online Social Networks have become an important part of daily digital interactions for more than half a billion users around the world. The various personal information sharing practices that online social network providers promote have led to their success as innovative social interaction platforms. At the same time, these practices have raised much critique and concerns with respect to privacy and security from different stakeholders.
Tackling Responsibilization
Studying and addressing these privacy and security concerns in online social networks is the research challenge that we are undertaking in SPION. Specifically, we plan to tackle the responsibilization of individuals with the task of mitigating privacy and security concerns in online social networks by putting the focus on the responsibilities of service providers and stakeholder organizations. We will explore ways in which the underlying social networking infrastructures and the organizations that run them can be made responsible and accountable for the relevant privacy and security concerns. We will also propose ways to develop and run SNS that are technically more secure and transparent to different stakeholders. The proposals will include mechanisms that fulfill the SNS user communities' privacy needs.
An Interdisciplinary Approach
We plan to achieve our objective by approaching our target audience's needs as well as forms of responsibilization from a variety of disciplines. This target audience includes users, communities and organizations in Flanders. We plan to bring the proposed legal, technical, social, educational and economic mechanisms to mitigate these concerns to the attention of different stakeholders of online social networks.
Supporting Tools
We plan to develop solutions that facilitate better decision making with respect to the target groups' privacy and security concerns, to mitigate the risks, threats and concerns that are currently manifest in this domain, and, most importantly, create educational tools to raise the awareness of privacy-issues with youngsters. With the dissemination and application of the research results we expect to contribute to increasing awareness about privacy and security problems in online social networks.
Contact us!
If you would like to find out more about our research, would like to join us for workshops, or be a part of our user group, please contact us: spion_info@esat.kuleuven.be
Partners and their Research Plans
(click on names to get more info)
Educational Aspects of Privacy in SNS
OWK, Department of Educational Sciences, University of Ghent, Belgium
The OWK research group emphasizes the development, implementation and evaluation of innovating practices in education. They see innovation not only as renewing, but also as improving education. Especially the new technological opportunities (eg. ICT) have had a big impact on the way learning and instruction in education is organized. The research of the group focuses on these opportunities and three main subthemes can be distinguished: Collaborative Learning, Face-to-face as well as computer supported; Learning in online learning environments; Educational Material and Multi Media.
Tammy Schellens
Tammy Schellens is a professor in Educational Technology at Ghent University. Educational reform by means of computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL) and the implementation of other collaborative environments are her main research topic. However, her field of interest includes also the use of educational technology in general and the use of active, innovative instructional strategies in different learning areas such as sciences education and teacher education. More information about her work can be found here .
Martin Valcke
Martin Valcke is a professor in Instructional Sciences at the Ghent University and Head of the Department of Education. Prior to his present position he worked for 10 years at the Dutch Open University in Research and Development projects about the design of electronic learning materials for flexible and open learning. His current interest is in the field of innovation of higher education by adopting e-learning solutions. More information about his work can be found here .
Ellen Vanderhoven
Ellen Vanderhoven is a Master in Theoretical and Experimental Psychology. In her internship she focused her research on the Jigsaw Puzzleclass for collaborative learning. After a teacher training, she started research on privacy and online social networks at the department of Education at Ghent University, in preparation for her Phd. More information about her work can be found here .
As the OWK team, we will concentrate our research on the educational part of this project. We will develop and evaluate attractive educational materials, as well as privacy manuals for educational users, that can be used in formal and informal situations. These products will be developed in close collaboration with the target audience. We will use a design based approach, starting with a needs-analysis (e.g., surveys, observation-studies), followed by the development of specific solutions, which will then be implemented, evaluated and adjusted.
Social Aspects of Privacy in SNS
IBBT - SMIT Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium
The research centre for Studies on Media, Information and Telecommunication (SMIT) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) was set up in 1990, within the department of Communication Studies (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy). Our research focuses on socio-economic and policy aspects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and underlying infrastructures. It combines both fundamental (PhD’s) and applied research, and has been active in short and long term, as well as national and European research projects. The centre endeavours an interdisciplinary course: the majority of researchers are communication scientists, but within the projects they work in close conjunction with sociologists, political scientists, lawyers, economists etc. In 2004 SMIT joined IBBT, the Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology. The research activities are structured in five clusters: User research, Market, media and innovation, Internet policy, Media policy and Culture lab.
Bram Lievens
Bram Lievens is a senior researcher within the SMIT user research team. His expertise is within the set-up of people-centred technology development as well as user evaluative projects. His main expertise is within the field of domestication research and living labs related to new media. Currently he is working on different interdisciplinary projects regarding new and emerging technologies, services and applications, mainly within a mobile environment. Bram Lievens is also active within iLab.o where he is doing Living Lab research on open innovation in ICT. More information about his work can be found here .
Jo Pierson
Jo Pierson is a professor in Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Faculty of Arts and Philosophy) where he lectures on undergraduate and masters courses, covering socio-economic issues relating to the information society, digital media marketing and qualitative research methods. His core scientific expertise is situated in the field of strategic innovation research on the meaning and use of fixed and mobile media technologies at home, at work and in public settings. More information about his work can be found here .
Ralf De Wolf
Ralf De Wolf has a Masters in Sociology from the Universiteit Gent. In his master thesis he studied sexual minorities and the meaning of their sexual identity. He also completed a degree in teaching. He is now working as a PhD researcher in the research centre IBBT-SMIT at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His Phd in Communication Studies focuses on the social aspects of security and privacy for social networksites. Key issues are offline and online communities, virtual identity, and the practices of social network users.
The SMIT research has a twofold perspective: On the one hand we aim to understand the practices and needs of users with regard to privacy issues within social network sites, mainly based on the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods. On the other hand, we will focus on the critical design variables and tools for social software. For the latter, a translation needs to be made from the user research findings to possible guidelines and requirements for future solutions in new media.
Behavioral Aspects of Privacy in SNS
Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.
The Heinz College is a leading institution in public policy and information systems.
Alessandro Acquisti
The CMU team is lead by Alessandro Acquisti. Alessandro is an Associate Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University. He is the co-director of the CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research (CBDR), a member of Carnegie Mellon Cylab and the CyLab Usability, Privacy, and Security Lab (CUPS), and a fellow of the Ponemon Institute. The CMU Team's work investigates the economic and social impact of IT, and in particular the economics and behavioral economics of privacy and information security, as well as privacy in online social networks. This research has received national and international awards, including the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies, the IBM Best Academic Privacy Faculty Award, the Heinz College Teaching Excellence Award, and various best paper Awards. Two manuscripts authored by members of the team were recently selected by the Future of Privacy Forum in their best "Privacy Papers for Policy Makers" competition. More information about his work can be found here .
Fred Stutzman
Fred Stutzman is a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, where he works with Alessandro Acquisti. In 2010, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science, where he was advised by Dr. Gary Marchionini. Fred holds a BA in Economics, and a graduate certificate in survey research (quantitative methodology) from the Odum Institute for Research in Social Sciences. More information about his work can be found here .
The CMU Team plans to investigate privacy and security decision making in online social networks through the lenses of behavioral economics, and inform the design of privacy and security technologies for online social networks through behavioral experiments, to anticipate and mitigate potential human cognitive and behavioral biases. As more of our personal and professional lives are spent online, making the "right" choices about our personal data becomes more difficult, especially because of cognitive and behavioral biases that impact our decision making. This is particularly the case with online social networks, which have vastly increased our ability to permanently disseminate personal information to strangers. Our results can help users make better decisions and create technologies that truly consider the human element (and do not make unrealistic assumptions about our usage of technology itself). Therefore, our research can be useful to technology designers but also to policy makers, in that the findings may highlight areas where a combination of technology and policy intervention will be needed.
Legal Aspects of Privacy in SNS
ICRI , Department of Law, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and Information Technology (known by its acronym ICRI, derived from the Dutch name for the Centre, Interdisciplinair Centrum voor Recht en Informatica) was established in 1990. The Centre is part of the Faculty of Law of K.U.Leuven, Belgium. Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Jos Dumortier, it has become to the top five research centres in Europe in the domain of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) law. The principal areas of legal research concern personal data protection and identity management, electronic commerce, Internet content control, ICT contracts and conflicts, electronic signatures and PKI, electronic archiving, e-government, ICT-related intellectual property rights and electronic communications.
Jos Dumortier
Prof. Jos Dumortier is professor in Law and IT at the Faculty of Law at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 1990 he founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for Law and Information Technology and was its first Director. He is the editor of the International Encyclopedia of Cyber Law, and he regularly works as an expert for the Belgian federal and regional governments, the European Commission and several national and international organizations. He co-founded the IT law firm time.lex, of which he is currently a senior partner. More information about his work can be found here .
Eva Lievens
Dr. Eva Lievens has been a member of ICRI's Communications Law department since 2003. She obtained her PhD in law titled 'Regulatory instruments for content regulation in digital media - A prospective study on the protection of minors against harmful content' in June 2009. Other media law related research she is involved in deals with legal challenges posed by new communication phenomena, such as the regulation of audiovisual media services, user-generated content, and virtual networks (IBBT project ISBO VIN) and social networks. More information about his work can be found here .
Brendan Van Alsenoy
Brendan Van Alsenoy has been a member of ICRI's Data Privacy and Information Security law department since 2007. His research focuses on data protection, identity management, trust services and digital evidence. He is currently preparing a doctoral thesis entitled 'Regulating data protection: the allocation of liability and risk among actors involved in personal data processing'. More information about his work can be found here .
The ICRI team will analyze the legal framework applicable to SNS actors and applications. In particular, we will identify and clarify the legal status and role of the different actors involved in order to map their respective rights, obligations, and liabilities. In addition, ICRI will develop a set of legal requirements that will be used to assess the compliance of existing tools and applications in light of the data protection legislation, and to ensure that new tools, such as transparency and feedback tools, are developed in accordance with the legislative framework. Finally, we will develop a set of criteria that need to be adhered to in order to enforce privacy-friendly policies in a reliable manner and to ensure the development of privacy-friendly default settings.
Trust and Access Control in SNS
DistriNet, Department of Computer Science, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
The "distributed systems and computer networks" (DistriNet) research group is part of the Department of Computer Science at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. The general domain of expertise and innovation of DistriNet is the development of open, distributed object support platforms for advanced applications. The research is always application driven and is often conducted in close collaboration with industry. DistriNet was founded in 1984 and has built up experience and expertise in system software for distributed systems since. The research has expanded from pure distributed operating systems to support platforms for distributed applications. Currently the DistriNet group works on a wide range of problems involving computer networks, middleware, distributed systems, embedded systems, multi-agent systems, security and internet middleware. DistriNet is a member of IBBT, an independent multi-disciplinary research institute founded by the Flemish government to stimulate ICT innovation in Flanders. IBBT's mission is to make Flanders a leading and internationally recognized player in the 'information society of the future'. IBBT brings together companies, authorities, and non-profit organizations to join forces on research projects in five specific research domains: eHealth, New Media, Mobility, Enabling technologies, and eGovernment.
Dave Clarke
Dave Clarke is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In his PhD thesis, and in several influential ECOOP and OOPSLA publications, Dave has pioneered and further developed the notion of ownership types to control some of the bad effects of aliasing in object-oriented languages. More information about his work can be found here .
Frank Piessens
Frank Piessens is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His research field is software security, where he focuses on the development of high-assurance techniques to deal with implementation-level software vulnerabilities and bugs, including techniques such as software verification and run-time monitoring. More information about his work can be found here .
Rula Sayaf
Rula Sayaf is PhD student in DistriNet research group at KULeuven, Belgium from where she also received her master-after-master degree in Artificial Intelligence. She researches about security and privacy in social networking under the supervision of professor Dave Clarke. Her main research interests revolve around privacy-awareness and accountability in social networking, robotics and humans society, cognitive bias and reasoning. Previously, she worked as a researcher in the EU project LIREC, and taught AI courses at the Arab International University. Independently, she works on teaching, building robots for orphan kids, and on a documentary film in research of human-robot relationships. You can find more about her work here .
DistriNet leads the work package on Trust, Reputation and Access Control. Two important research tracks planned by Distrinet are: (1) the fundamental study of access control and accountability in online social networks, and (2) the development of enforcement mechanisms for security and privacy policies in browser based applications.
Confidentiality in SNS
COSIC/ESAT, Department of Electrical Engineering, K. U. Leuven, Belgium
COSIC/ESAT's research activities are focused on creating a secure electronic equivalent for interactions in the physical world such as confidentiality, signatures, identification, anonymity, payment and elections. The research concentrates on the design, evaluation, and implementation of cryptographic algorithms and protocols, on the development of security architectures for information and communication systems and on the development of security mechanisms for embedded systems.
Ero Balsa
Ero Balsa received his master degree in Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Vigo (Spain), doing his master thesis at the COSIC (Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography) Research Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the K.U. Leuven. In his master thesis, he studied the effect of dummy traffic as an strategy to counterattack traffic analysis on online social networks. He later joined COSIC, where currently is a Ph.D. candidate. In his doctoral thesis, entitled "Privacy in online social networks: analysis and solutions" he aims to develop methodologies to systematically analyze privacy risks on online social networks, model user behavior, adversarial knowledge and capabilities as well as metrics to quantify the degree to which privacy requirements are satisfied. More information about his work can be found here .
Claudia Diaz
Prof. Claudia Diaz is Assistant Professor at the COSIC (Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography) Research Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the K.U. Leuven. She received her master degree in Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Vigo (Spain), and her Ph.D. in engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Her research is broadly focused on the topic of Privacy Enhancing Technologies, where she has more than twenty-five international peer-reviewed publications on topics including anonymous communications, anonymity metrics, steganographic file systems, and traffic analysis. More information about her work can be found here .
Seda Gürses
Dr. Seda Gürses is currently a post-doc at COSIC/ESAT working on privacy in social networks, requirements engineering, privacy enhancing technologies and identity management systems. She is also part of the Privacy and Identity Management Group. She completed her PhD titled "Multilateral Privacy Requirements Analysis in Online Social Networks" at the Arenberg School in the group DTAI of the Computer Science Department, K.U. Leuven, under the supervision of Bettina Berendt and Bart Preneel. More information about her work can be found here .
Bart Preneel
Prof. Bart Preneel's research area is information security. His research focuses on cryptographic algorithms and protocols as well as their applications to computer and network security and mobile communications. His favourite research topics are hash functions, MAC algorithms, stream ciphers and block ciphers. More information about his work can be found here .
The COSIC Team will investigate techniques for preserving a broad range of confidentiality properties in social networks, including anonymity, unlinkability, unobservability, location privacy, membership privacy, and behavioral confidentiality. We will consider both centralized and distributed networks, including mobile networking applications. The COSIC team will also coordinate the project, lead the activities to establish the conceptual framework, the integration and translation of the elicited requirements, as well as organize the dissemination of the project results.
Feedback and Awareness in SNS
DTAI , Department of Computer Science, K. U. Leuven, Belgium
Research in the "Declarative Languages and Artifical Intelligence" group focuses on programming languages and artificial intelligence. Main themes of study are in the fields of declarative languages, machine learning, data mining and knowledge representation.
Bettina Berendt
Bettina Berendt is a Professor in the Declarative Languages and Artifical Intelligence (DTAI) at K.U.Leuven, Belgium. Her research interests include Web, news and blog mining, privacy, information literacy, information visualisation and interaction, and interdisciplinary approaches to these questions. More information about her work can be found here .
Bo Gao
Bo Gao is a PhD student in the research group Hypermedia and Databases at K.U.Leuven, Belgium. His research interests include privacy awareness, web mining, information literacy, data visualization and computer graphics. More information can be found here .
In information systems, it is difficult if not impossible to contain previously revealed information. Yet, these revelations may be used to provide individuals with awareness about the kind and amount of information that is available about them in different systems. As researchers in the HMDB team, we will study how this awareness can be raised using transparency and feedback tools based on various data mining technologies. We will couple our results with appropriate presentation (e.g. visualization) and interaction methods in order to effectively reach users. Our main aim in this project is to create, deploy and evaluate methods and tools that embody this combination, in order to help people understand and shape the different spaces of the public and the private that they want to inhabit.

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