Your privacy information are leaking when you surfing on the social networks: A survey of the degree of online self-disclosure (DOSD)

Surfing on the online social networks is becoming a daily experience of many modern people. Many factors cause users to willingly share their privacy information in online social networks. However, leaking privacy information online is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, privacy leakage may improve user´s influence in online social networks, and acquaint more online friends. On the other hand, it may invite malicious attacks from the real world and cyberspace, such as stalking, embarrassment, spamming and phishing. In this paper, we study the privacy leaking problem in Pengyou, one of the most popular online social network of China. Eight fake users gained a lot of online friends through sending friend requests to unfamiliar people, and won the privilege accessing to these cyber-friends´ profiles. Based on the collected online users´ profiles, we quantitatively analyze the degree of online self-disclosure (DOSD) of online social network users, the age distribution of fake users´ friends, and photographs information leakage of the fake users´ friends. The survey results reveal some hazards for social network users, especially for minors and young people. Finally, we discuss some critical issues about privacy leakage, and suggest several possible means of mitigating the privacy leakage problem.