Privacy-Preserving Photo Sharing based on a Secure JPEG

Sharing photos online is a common activity on social networks and photo hosting platforms, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or Flickr. However, after reports of citizens surveillance by governmental agencies and the scandalous leakage of celebrities private photos online, people have become concerned about their online privacy and are looking for ways to protect it. Popular social networks typically offer privacy protection solutions only in response to the public demand and therefore are often rudimental, complex to use, and provide limited degree of control and protection. Most solutions either allow users to control who can access the shared photos or for how long they can be accessed. In contrast, in this paper, we take a structured privacy by design approach to the problem of online photo privacy protection. We propose a privacy-preserving photo sharing architecture that takes into account content and context of a photo with privacy protection integrated inside the JPEG file itself in a secure way. We demonstrate the proposed architecture with a prototype mobile iOS application called ProShare that offers scrambling as the privacy protection tool for a selected region in a photo, secure access to the protected images, and secure photo sharing on Facebook

Secure JPEG Scrambling enabling Privacy in Photo Sharing

With the popularization of online social networks (OSNs) and smart mobile devices, photo sharing is becoming a part of people’ daily life. An unprecedented number of photos are being uploaded and shared everyday through online social networks or photo hosting services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr. However, such unrestrained online photo or multimedia sharing has raised serious privacy concerns, especially after reports of citizens surveillance by governmental agencies and scandalous leakage of private photos from prominent photo sharing sites or online cloud services. Popular OSNs typically offer privacy protection solutions only in response to the public demand and therefore are often rudimental, complex to use, and provide limited degree of control and protection. Most solutions allow users to control either who can access the shared photos or for how long they can be accessed. In contrast, in this paper, we take a structured privacy by design approach to the problem of online photo privacy protection. We propose a privacy-preserving photo sharing architecture based on a secure JPEG scrambling algorithm capable of protecting the privacy of multiple users involved in a photo. We demonstrate the proposed photo sharing architecture with a prototype application called ProShare that offers JPEG scrambling as the privacy protection tool for selected regions in a photo, secure access to the protected images, and secure photo sharing on Facebook

Literature Overview - Privacy in Online Social Networks

In recent years, Online Social Networks (OSNs) have become an important\ud part of daily life for many. Users build explicit networks to represent their\ud social relationships, either existing or new. Users also often upload and share a plethora of information related to their personal lives. The potential privacy risks of such behavior are often underestimated or ignored. For example, users often disclose personal information to a larger audience than intended. Users may even post information about others without their consent. A lack of experience and awareness in users, as well as proper tools and design of the OSNs, perpetuate the situation. This paper aims to provide insight into such privacy issues and looks at OSNs, their associated privacy risks, and existing research into solutions. The final goal is to help identify the research directions for the Kindred Spirits project

An Empirical Study on Android for Saving Non-shared Data on Public Storage

With millions of apps that can be downloaded from official or third-party market, Android has become one of the most popular mobile platforms today. These apps help people in all kinds of ways and thus have access to lots of user's data that in general fall into three categories: sensitive data, data to be shared with other apps, and non-sensitive data not to be shared with others. For the first and second type of data, Android has provided very good storage models: an app's private sensitive data are saved to its private folder that can only be access by the app itself, and the data to be shared are saved to public storage (either the external SD card or the emulated SD card area on internal FLASH memory). But for the last type, i.e., an app's non-sensitive and non-shared data, there is a big problem in Android's current storage model which essentially encourages an app to save its non-sensitive data to shared public storage that can be accessed by other apps. At first glance, it seems no problem to do so, as those data are non-sensitive after all, but it implicitly assumes that app developers could correctly identify all sensitive data and prevent all possible information leakage from private-but-non-sensitive data. In this paper, we will demonstrate that this is an invalid assumption with a thorough survey on information leaks of those apps that had followed Android's recommended storage model for non-sensitive data. Our studies showed that highly sensitive information from billions of users can be easily hacked by exploiting the mentioned problematic storage model. Although our empirical studies are based on a limited set of apps, the identified problems are never isolated or accidental bugs of those apps being investigated. On the contrary, the problem is rooted from the vulnerable storage model recommended by Android. To mitigate the threat, we also propose a defense framework

Engaging through social media. Part 1 social media explained

This guide is designed for youth project managers, and has the following aims "To explain social media technologies and functions using simple language. To provide you with the tools to increase interest and attendance at your project by working with young people and promoting your activities through social media.