Profile Cloning in Online Social Networks

Today, Online Social Networks (OSNs) are becoming important due to the recent explosive growth in online interactions. They allow their users to express their personality and to meet people with similar interests. Meanwhile, there are also many potential privacy threats posed by these websites, such as identity theft and the revealing of personal information. However, many users have not yet been made aware of these threats, and the privacy setting that is provided by OSNs' service providers is not flexible enough to preserve users' data. Furthermore, users do not have control over what others share about them. One of the recently emerging attacks is the impersonation of a real user, instead of creating a fake account for a non-existing user, which is called Identity Theft Attack (ICA) or profile cloning. The purpose of cloned profiles is to try to steal real users' identities by making contact with their friends in order to financially abuse them or misuse their reputation. In this paper profile cloning attacks and some possible ways of detecting them are discussed. Then, based on the recent techniques and attack strategies further directions in research are proposed. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]