Security and privacy of online social network applications

An important recent innovation on social networking sites is the support for plugging in third-party social applications. Together with the ever-growing number of social network users, social applications come with privacy and security risks for those users. While basic mechanisms for isolating applications are well understood, these mechanisms fall short for social-enabled applications. It is an interesting challenge to design and develop application platforms for social networks that enable the necessary functionality of social applications without compromising both users' security and privacy. This chapter will identify and discuss the current security and privacy problems related to social applications and their platforms. Next, it will zoom in on proposals on how to address those problems.