Data Protection in Healthcare Social Networks

Healthcare social networking sites (HSNSs) provide users with tools and services to easily establish contact with each other around shared problems and utilize the wisdom of crowds to attack disease. The increasing popularity of HSNSs has led to concern over the privacy of health-related data published through these Web sites. The open philosophy of contemporary HSNSs can result in unauthorized use and disclosure of sensitive personal health data. Prior research about how best to protect such data has focused on specific technologies such as privacy settings and data anonymization. However, the fundamental challenge to data protection in HSNSs is more system-related than technical. A set of system requirements with a special emphasis on preventing privacy violations by service providers can help tackle these privacy and security problems.