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On the Impact of Social Network Profiling on Anonymity

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Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2008)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 5134))

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Abstract

This paper studies anonymity in a setting where individuals who communicate with each other over an anonymous channel are also members of a social network. In this setting the social network graph is known to the attacker. We propose a Bayesian method to combine multiple available sources of information and obtain an overall measure of anonymity. We study the effects of network size and find that in this case anonymity degrades when the network grows. We also consider adversaries with incomplete or erroneous information; characterize their knowledge of the social network by its quantity, quality and depth; and discuss the implications of these properties for anonymity.

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Nikita Borisov Ian Goldberg

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Diaz, C., Troncoso, C., Serjantov, A. (2008). On the Impact of Social Network Profiling on Anonymity. In: Borisov, N., Goldberg, I. (eds) Privacy Enhancing Technologies. PETS 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5134. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70630-4_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70630-4_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-70629-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-70630-4

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