Protecting Privacy from Social Network Structure-based Inference
- Technology Benefits
- Currently, no social network services implement any privacy evaluation, alert, and recommendation techniques that could help end users easily evaluate and manage the level to which their private information is revealed. Neither does any personal software tool exist on the market that provides such functionality.
- Technology Application
- For the end user: implementation in a personal privacy management and advising software tool For an online social networking provider: provide privacy evaluation as part of its service to end users For a product recommender: based on a users interest on the set of attributes for a given product, using the social relationships among friends to infer which of his friends will also be interested in this product.
- Detailed Technology Description
- The invention uses a method to infer with a high degree of accuracy personal information based on social networks.
- Supplementary Information
- Patent Number: US8160993B2
Application Number: US2008124640A
Inventor: Chu, Wesley W. | He, Jianming | Liu, Zhenyu
Priority Date: 22 May 2007
Priority Number: US8160993B2
Application Date: 21 May 2008
Publication Date: 17 Apr 2012
IPC Current: G06N000504
US Class: 706055
Assignee Applicant: The Regents of the University of California
Title: System and methods for evaluating inferences of unknown attributes in a social network
Usefulness: System and methods for evaluating inferences of unknown attributes in a social network
Novelty: Method of determining conditional probability of inference of unknown attribute in online social network, involves creating simplified network using input attribute values and relationships which are received fro additional nodes
- Industry
- ICT/Telecom
- Sub Category
- Telecommunication
- Application No.
- 8160993
- Others
-
State of Development
The concept has been developed and results of the experiment have been published.
Background
Recent years have seen a huge growth in online social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and Friendster. Given the huge amount of personal data and social relationships available in online social networks, protecting ones personal privacy is a growing problem. Since private information can be inferred via social relationships, it is possible to infer private information even when such information is not shared.
Additional Technologies by these Inventors
Tech ID/UC Case
20243/2007-626-0
Related Cases
2007-626-0
- *Abstract
-
UCLA researchers in the Department of Computer Science have developed an invention to quantify how much a piece of personal information can be inferred based on social network structures revealed in online social networking services and methods to automatically generate recommendations to protect such personal information.
- *IP Issue Date
- Apr 17, 2012
- *Principal Investigator
-
Name: Wesley Chu
Department:
Name: Jianming He
Department:
Name: Zhenyu Liu
Department:
- Country/Region
- USA
