Dynamic Privacy Enforcement for Social Networking Data Sharing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing social networking systems lack the ability to enforce user privacy settings outside their platform, leading to potential misuse of user data and failure to account for dynamic changes in privacy settings, resulting in an inferior user experience and ineffective targeting of advertisements.
Innovation Solution
A social networking system that maintains and enforces privacy settings dynamically, allowing external systems to access and use user data while ensuring compliance with privacy rules, by propagating updates and limiting data usage to predetermined time periods or upon request.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If social networking systems allow external systems to access user data, then data sharing and external service functionality are improved, but privacy control and data security deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary mechanism where the social networking system acts as a mediator between user privacy settings and external system data access. The system translates privacy settings into access control decisions for external systems, ensuring that data sharing is enabled only when it complies with user-defined privacy rules. This intermediary layer resolves the contradiction by enabling external access while maintaining privacy control through the mediation of privacy setting enforcement.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the system enforces privacy settings dynamically, then privacy control is improved, but system complexity and response time deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-translating and pre-processing privacy settings into a format that external systems can understand and enforce. The social networking system prepares privacy setting information in advance and provides it to external systems along with the data, allowing external systems to enforce privacy compliance locally without requiring continuous complex interaction with the social networking system. This reduces real-time complexity while maintaining dynamic privacy enforcement.
3Quantity of substance
If the system maintains comprehensive user data for external sharing, then data availability for external systems is improved, but data security and privacy protection deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by providing external systems with only the specific data and privacy setting information that is relevant to their functionality and that the user has made available for external access. Rather than providing comprehensive user data, the system selectively shares data based on the specific external system's needs and the user's privacy settings, thereby reducing security risks while maintaining necessary data availability for authorized external services.
Data Source
AI summary
An external system (such as a website) that interacts with users communicates with a social networking system to access information about the users, who may also be users of the social networking system. If a privacy setting is changed in the social networking system, and the change applies to information that has been shared with an external system, the change is enforced at the external system. For example, the external system may be notified that the information is invalid and must be deleted, or the external system may periodically request the information so that changes to the privacy settings are eventually experienced at the external systems. When an external system again needs the information, whether expired naturally or actively invalidated by the social network, the external system sends a new request for the information, which is subject to the (possibly revised) privacy settings.