Parent-child communication about internet use and acceptance of parental authority

Structural equation modeling is applied to investigate how parents' communication with their child about his or her Internet use is linked to the child's acceptance of parental authority in the context of Internet use, and how this in turn is linked to the child's social media behavior. This study surveyed children aged 13 to 18 and their mothers and fathers (N = 357 families) and found that acceptance of parental authority is a key factor in the effectiveness of parental mediation. It is recommended that parental mediation is studied as a dynamic process shaped by both parents and children

Sharing Social Network Data: Differentially Private Estimation of Exponential-Family Random Graph Models

Motivated by a real-life problem of sharing social network data that contain sensitive personal information, we propose a novel approach to release and analyze synthetic graphs in order to protect privacy of individual relationships captured by the social network while maintaining the validity of statistical results. A case study using a version of the Enron e-mail corpus dataset demonstrates the application and usefulness of the proposed techniques in solving the challenging problem of maintaining privacy \emph{and} supporting open access to network data to ensure reproducibility of existing studies and discovering new scientific insights that can be obtained by analyzing such data. We use a simple yet effective randomized response mechanism to generate synthetic networks under $\epsilon$-edge differential privacy, and then use likelihood based inference for missing data and Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to fit exponential-family random graph models to the generated synthetic networks.Comment: Updated, 39 page

Hiding in Plain Sight: A Longitudinal Study of Combosquatting Abuse

Domain squatting is a common adversarial practice where attackers register domain names that are purposefully similar to popular domains. In this work, we study a specific type of domain squatting called "combosquatting," in which attackers register domains that combine a popular trademark with one or more phrases (e.g., betterfacebook[.]com, youtube-live[.]com). We perform the first large-scale, empirical study of combosquatting by analyzing more than 468 billion DNS records---collected from passive and active DNS data sources over almost six years. We find that almost 60% of abusive combosquatting domains live for more than 1,000 days, and even worse, we observe increased activity associated with combosquatting year over year. Moreover, we show that combosquatting is used to perform a spectrum of different types of abuse including phishing, social engineering, affiliate abuse, trademark abuse, and even advanced persistent threats. Our results suggest that combosquatting is a real problem that requires increased scrutiny by the security community.Comment: ACM CCS 1

Modelling Requirements for Content Recommendation Systems

This paper addresses the modelling of requirements for a content Recommendation System (RS) for Online Social Networks (OSNs). On OSNs, a user switches roles constantly between content generator and content receiver. The goals and softgoals are different when the user is generating a post, as opposed as replying to a post. In other words, the user is generating instances of different entities, depending on the role she has: a generator generates instances of a "post", while the receiver generates instances of a "reply". Therefore, we believe that when addressing Requirements Engineering (RE) for RS, it is necessary to distinguish these roles clearly. We aim to model an essential dynamic on OSN, namely that when a user creates (posts) content, other users can ignore that content, or themselves start generating new content in reply, or react to the initial posting. This dynamic is key to designing OSNs, because it influences how active users are, and how attractive the OSN is for existing, and to new users. We apply a well-known Goal Oriented RE (GORE) technique, namely i-star, and show that this language fails to capture this dynamic, and thus cannot be used alone to model the problem domain. Hence, in order to represent this dynamic, its relationships to other OSNs' requirements, and to capture all relevant information, we suggest using another modelling language, namely Petri Nets, on top of i-star for the modelling of the problem domain. We use Petri Nets because it is a tool that is used to simulate the dynamic and concurrent activities of a system and can be used by both practitioners and theoreticians.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figure

A framework for the definition of metrics for actor-dependency models

Actor-dependency models are a formalism aimed at providing intentional descriptions of processes as a network of dependency relationships among actors. This kind of models is currently widely used in the early phase of requirements engineering as well as in other contexts such as organizational analysis and business process reengineering. In this paper, we are interested in the definition of a framework for the formulation of metrics over these models. These metrics are used to analyse the models with respect to some properties that are interesting for the system being modelled, such as security, efficiency or accuracy. The metrics are defined in terms of the actors and dependencies of the model. We distinguish three different kinds of metrics that are formally defined, and then we apply the framework at two different layers of a meeting scheduler system.Postprint (published version

An introduction to STRIKE : STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment

Knowledge forms a critical part of the income generation of the system and the complex environment in which actors participate in the creation of knowledge assets merits robust, eclectic consideration. STRIKE - STRuctured Interpretation of the Knowledge Environment affords an unobtrusive and systematic framework to observe, record, evaluate and articulate concrete and abstract elements of a setting, across internal and external dimensions. Inter-relationships between actor and environment are preserved. STRIKE is supported by underlying techniques to enrich data and enhance the authenticity of its representation. Adoption of photography and videography tools provides illustrative and interpretive benefits and facilitates researcher reflexivity. This structured approach to data analysis and evaluation mitigates criticisms of methodological rigour in observational research and affords standardisation potential, germane for application in a verification or longitudinal capacity. Advancing exploratory validation studies, the method is employed to evaluate the knowledge environments of two enterprises in the UK creative sector. These occupy a critical role in fostering entrepreneurial innovation alongside participant self-efficacy. Access Space in Sheffield and the Bristol Hackspace are committed to open software, open knowledge and open participation; sharing peer learning, creativity and socio-technical aims to address broadly similar community needs. Drawing on Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory of Meaning, the knowledge management perspective is abstracted from the STRIKE assessment. It is argued that the tiered analytical approach which considers a breadth of dimensions enhances representation and interpretation of the knowledge environment and presents a diagnostic and prescriptive capability to actualise change. The paper concludes by evaluating framework effectiveness, findings application and future direction

Synergy: An Energy Monitoring and Visualization System

The key to becoming a more sustainable society is first learning to take responsibility for the role we play in energy consumption. Real-time energy usage gives energy consumers a sense of responsibility over what they can do to accomplish a much larger goal for the planet, and practically speaking, what they can do to lower the cost to their wallets. Synergy is an energy monitoring and visualization system that enables users to gather information about the energy consumption in a building – small or large – and display that data for the user in real-time. The gathered energy usage data is processed on the edge before being stored in the cloud. The two main benefits of edge processing are issuing electricity hazard warnings immediately and preserving user privacy. In addition to being a scalable solution that intended for use in individual households, commercial offices and city power grids, Synergy is open-source so that it can be implemented more widely. This paper contains a system overview as well as initial finding based on the data collected by Synergy before assessing the impact the system can have on society