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A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details An Evaluation of Identity in Online Social Networking: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction _______________________________________________________________ Roya Feizy Software Systems Group School of Informatics University of Sussex Submitted to the School of Informatics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at University of Sussex, Nov 2010 Thesis Committee: Supervisors . Dr Ian Wakeman School of Informatics University of Sussex Dr Dan Chalmers School of Informatics University of Sussex Thesis Reader . Dr Natalia Beloff University of Sussex Thesis Reader . Dr Eamonn O‟Neill University of Bath ii | P a g e Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Parts of this thesis have previously appeared in the following publications: „Are Your Friends Who They Say They Are?‟, ACM Crossroads 16, 2, 19-23, Dec 2009. „Transformation of Online Representation through Time‟, International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis and Mining, Athens, Jul 2009. „Distinguishing Fact and Fiction: Data Mining Online Identities‟, In Proceedings of 5th International Workshop on Security and Trust Management (STM), France, Sep 2009. Signature . Roya Feizy iii | P a g e Abstract Online social networks are understood to replicate the real life connections between people. As the technology matures, more people are joining social networking communities such as MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Facebook (www.facebook.com). These online communities provide the opportunity for individuals to present themselves and maintain social interactions through their profiles. Such traces in profiles can be used as evidence in deciding the level of trust with which to imbue individuals in making access control decisions. However, online profiles have serious implications over the reality of identity disclosure. There are many reasons why someone may choose not to reveal their true self, which sometimes leads to misidentification or deception. On one hand, the structure of online profiles allows anonymity, which gives users the opportunity to create a persona that may not represent their true identity. On the other hand, we often play multiple identities in different contexts where such behaviour is acceptable. However, realizing the context for each identity representation depends on the individual. As a result, some represented identities will be essentially real, if edited for public view, some will be disguised, and others will be fictitious or humorous. The millions of social network profiles, and billions of connections between them, make it difficult to formalize an automated approach to differentiate fact from fiction in online self-described identities. How can we be sure with whom we are interacting, and whether these individuals or groups are being truthful with the online identities they present to the rest of the community? What tools and techniques can be used to gather, organize, and explore the available data for informing the level of honesty that should be entrusted to an individual? Can we verify the validity of the identity automatically, based on the available information online? We aim to evaluate identity representation online and examine how identity can be verified in a less trusted online community. We propose a personality classifier model to identify a user‟s personality (such as expressive, valid, active, positive, popular, sociable and traceable) using traces of 2.2 million profile features collected from MySpace. We use data mining techniques and social network analysis to extract significant patterns in the data and network structure, and improve the classifier during the cycle of development. We evaluate our classifier model on profiles with known identities such as „real‟ and „fake‟. Our results indicate that by utilizing people‟s online, self-reported information, personality, and their network of friends and interactions, we are able to provide evidence for validating the type of identity in a manner that is both accurate and scalable. iv | P a g e Acknowledgments The PhD years have been very challenging and intense and it‟s time to conclude this important period in my life. Here I would like to thank those who have influenced me technically and emotionally to reach this moment. My primary thanks go to my supervisor, Dr Ian Wakeman, who has given me the opportunity to work in his group. I am heartily thankful to him, whose guidance, encouragement and constant support from the initial to the final stage enabled me to develop an understanding of the research subject. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my second supervisor, Dr Dan Chalmers, for his invaluable advice throughout this study, whose expertise and understanding added considerably to my knowledge. I am also grateful to the member of the thesis committee, Dr Des Watson, for reading and evaluating reports and for his insightful comments. I would like to acknowledge the members of the Foundation of Software System Group (FOSS): Dr Anirban Basu, Simon Fleming, Lachhman Dhomeja, Aeshah Alsiyami, James Stanier, Dr Jian Li, Yasir Malkani, Danny Matthews, Renan Krishna and Stephen Naicken. While it has been a diverse and evolving group, it has remained unified with a friendly atmosphere. I especially express my sincere gratitude to Simon Fleming and James Stanier for their kind assistance with thesis proof reading and their valuable comments. I am also indebted to Dr Jon Robinson for his outstanding advice throughout the entire thesis. This research would not be possible without the generous sponsorship from the Mehr Cultural Foundation. In particular I would like to thank Dr Ghasemi, who has played a large role for partly financing my study. I would also like to extend my thanks to the School of Informatics at the University of Sussex for providing the facilities, resources and the relaxed environment in which I could develop my academic interests. Further, I wish to thank my family and friends who patiently supported me in many respects during the completion of this research. In particular, my deepest gratitude goes to my beloved family for their moral support during my study at Sussex. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to my soul mate, Pejman Karami, for his extensive encouragement, patience and unconditional love. v | P a g e Table of Contents Page Chapter 1 Introduction ……………………………..……......................... 1 1.1 Introduction …….…………………………………............................. 1 1.2 Problem definition ………………………….…….............................. 6 1.2.1 Self-representation of identity .......................................... 7 1.2.2 Deficiency of identity verification ...................................... 7 1.2.3 Lack of trust management ............................................... 8 1.2.4 Privacy implications ......................................................... 9 1.3 Aim and objectives ……………………………................................. 9 1.3.1 Research questions …………………....…............................. 10 1.3.2 Contributions ………………........…..……............................ 11 1.3.3 Research methods .……………………................................. 12 1.3.4 Research ethics .…………….........………............................ 13 1.4 Structure of the thesis ……………….....……................................ 13 Chapter 2 Literature Review …..……………………….......................... 16 2.1 Research background ……………………………............................ 16 2.1.1 The notion of identity ………………………........................... 17 2.1.2 Online self-representation ………………….......................... 18 2.1.3 Social and multiple identities ……………........................... 19 2.1.4 Online social networking (MySpace) ....….......................... 20 2.2 Online identity concerns …………………………........................... 22 2.2.1 Identity disclosure and privacy …………............................ 22 2.2.2 Anonymity and pseudonymity …………….......................... 23 2.2.3 Trust implication and honesty ..…………........................... 24 2.2.4 MySpace identity issues …………………….......................... 25 2.3 Related work ……………..……..…………………............................ 26 2.3.1 Identity management systems …………….......................... 27 2.3.2 Evaluation of online communities .................................... 28 2.3.3 Social network analysis ……………………........................... 31 2.3.3.1 Friendship analysis .....…………............................ 32 2.3.3.2 Similarity analysis ….……………........................... 33 2.3.4 Data mining and machine learning ……............................ 34 2.3.5 Deception detection ………………………….......................... 35 2.3.6 Recommendation systems ………………….......................... 36 2.4 Literature summary .………………………………........................... 37 Chapter 3 Research Approaches ……………………….......................... 39 3.1