Privacy-enhanced social network routing in opportunistic networks

Opportunistic networking-forwarding messages in a disconnected mobile ad hoc network via any encountered nodes-offers a new mechanism for exploiting the mobile devices that many users already carry. Forwarding messages in such a network often involves the use of social network routing-sending messages via nodes in the sender or recipient´s social network. Simple social network routing, however, may broadcast these social networks, which introduces privacy concerns. This paper introduces two methods for enhancing privacy in social network routing by obfuscating the social network graphs used to inform routing decisions. We evaluate these methods using two real-world datasets, and find that it is possible to obfuscate the social network information without leading to a significant decrease in routing performance.