Abstract

Online Social Networks (OSNs) are computer-based technologies that enable users to create content, share information, and establish social relationships in online platforms. The advent of OSNs has dramatically revolutionized the way we access the news, share opinion, make business and politics. Although the wide adoption of OSNs brought several positive effects, the combination of its technological and social aspects hides harmful effects for both the individual users and the entire society. Among the potential risks analyzed in the literature (e.g., security, health, etc.), in this thesis, we analyze the perils related to the privacy leakage and the manipulation of opinions in OSNs. In particular, we investigate the factors driving these perils, with the final objective of raising users’ awareness of the risks behind their online activities. We show how, for both the privacy and manipulation perils, social connections play a central role in fostering and exacerbating such issues. In fact, social connections among OSN users result in a network structure, which enables the spreading of information, behaviours, and opinions across the OSN population through online interactions. Along this research direction, we first explore to what extent an individual’s privacy can be violated by leveraging information provided by other users in the OSN. In particular, we examine the problem of location privacy by developing methods to assess users’ privacy risks and strategies to control the public exposure of their data. Then, we explore the privacy peril by considering the diffusion of behaviours and opinions in OSNs. In fact, social interactions can substantially affect the extent …

Date

November 5, 2025

Authors

Luca Luceri

Institution

Universität Bern