Sharing and hiding online secrets Using social relation and tag ontology in social software access control

摘要

Purpose - This paper aims to manage access control tasks to satisfy the user privacy needs of onlinerninformation resources according to social relations and tags.rnDesign/methodology/approach - The study proposes a method for access control management inrnthe online social context. The proposed method includes the access control policy managementrnprocess, metadata of access control policies, the data of ontologies, tags, and social relations, andrnconflict detection rules.rnFindings - Online information sharing and hiding, which needs to consider social relations andrnmentioned topics, is a unique context and needs a novel access control mechanism. Ontologies arernpowerful and expressive enough to identify conflicts in access control policies. The paper provides arnmethod using ontologies to control the access control activities based on social relations and tags onrnweb content. The effectiveness of the method's conflict detection rules is validated through severalrnscenarios.rnResearch limitations/implications - To make the proposed method suitable for widespreadrnusage, further work is required to develop an access control policy specification and conflictrndetection tool. The proposed method introduces relatively novel usage scenarios, which considerrnsocial relationships, and tags compared with existing access control methods for online informationrnsharing.rnPractical implications - The proposed access control mechanism can be integrated into existingrnweb sites. Online users can use this method to share information more easily than at present.rnOriginality/value - The method enables flexible access control in social contexts and handlesrnunavoidable conflicts. It also opens the way to new access control scenarios in online social activities.rnThe method can be used to keep secrets hidden from selected people.