STUDY: Facebook’s Mutual Friends Feature Presents Security Concerns, Privacy Risks

How safe is Facebook’s mutual friends feature? Not very, according to a recent study at the University of Pittsburgh.

How safe is Facebook’s mutual friends feature? Not very, according to a recent study at the University of Pittsburgh.

The study found that the social network’s mutual friends feature “creates myriad security risks and privacy concerns,” adding that even though users can adjust their privacy settings, hackers can still access information that is intended to be private.

University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences Associate Professor of Information Assurance and Security James Joshi was the study’s principal investigator, joined by Mohd Anwar, a former faculty member in Pitt’s School of Information Sciences and now assistant professor at North Carolina A&T State University, and Lei Jin, a PhD candidate in Pitt’s School of Information Sciences.

The trio used computer simulation programs to conduct “attacks” on 10 randomly chosen groups of between 500 and 5,000 users, as well as sample groups based on shared interests, and the attacks were able to reveal 60 percent of...

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