AnonyFacebook - Liking Facebook Posts Anonymously^*

Pedro Alves¹ and Paulo Ferreira²

¹Opensoft / INESC-ID / IST, Rua Joshua Benoliel, 1 - 3D, Lisboa, Portugal
pedro.h.alves@gmail.com

²INESC-ID / IST, Rua Alves Redol 9, Lisboa, Portugal
paulo.ferreira@inesc-id.pt

Abstract. In several countries the simple act of liking (on Facebook) an anti-government article or video can be (and has already been) used to pursue and detain activists. Given such a scenario, it is of great relevance to allow anyone to anonymously ”like” any post.

In this paper we present anonyFacebook, a system that allows Facebook users to ”like” a post (e.g., news, photo, video) without revealing their identity (even to the social network administrators). Obviously, such anonymous ”likes” count to the total number of ”likes”. Anonymous ”likes” are ensured by means of cryptographic techniques such as homomorphic encryption and shared threshold key pairs.

Keywords: social networks, privacy, anonymity, homomorphic encryption

^*This work was partially supported by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under projects Pest-OE/EEI/LA0021/2013 and PTDC/EIA-EIA/113993/2009.

LNCS 8186, p. 709 ff.

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