Anonymous Communication in Online Social Networks

Master Thesis

Facebook and Twitter are counting your breaths, tracking all your actions, all your communications. That can be creepy! However, all your friends are using these networks, and it is inconvenient to give them up completely. OK, what about using Twitter to communicate with your friends without Twitter being aware of this communication? let's dive in..

Hybrid Online Social Network (HOSN) [1] provides the users on Twitter with additional means of privacy control. Besides using Twitter normally, HOSN enables users to tweet securely to a private network, which is accessible only by the users’ fellows, away from the commercial service providers. However, developing this concept encounters several challenges including, among others, hiding the user identity from the provider during the communication. There are several well-known techniques to achieve anonymous communication, such as ADCNet [2] and Private Information Retrieval. I am offering an open thesis position to combine an anonymous communication technique with HOSN. Interested students from Informatics are encouraged to apply.

Required Skills

  • Interested in online social networks and privacy
  • Programming skills (preferable Ionic, Python, Web/Android apps)

References

[1] Tweet beyond the Cage: A Hybrid Solution for the Privacy Dilemma in Online Social Networks

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9013901?casa_token=HySH0I2KHcAAAAAA:EWBS4pnMDEbBRSRv2QvatPFAsM9kRWQyhpVtNWuZOxKYryVYEwcXvN7pS2Mew0K8pLetAVJLosM

https://git.tk.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/SPIN/HOSN-app

[2] Asymmetric DCnets for Effective and Efficient Sender Anonymity

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8647607?casa_token=ep_6Kz13NuIAAAAA:etOvemjfsfN6dhbfL2ZjlfLYDbuCY3NcGjkJG2UYECPQpbdF8vjdGG7LtKnB1KuhgjB3JZhjR4s

Supervisor: Aidmar Wainakh, wainakh@tk.tu-darmstadt.de

* Please be sure to read the aforementioned papers before contacting the supervisor

* Please start your email title with: [THESIS APPLICANT]