Exploiting Privacy-Policy and -Management Features on Social Networks: A User’s Perspective Mohd Ishak Ismail 1 , Md Arafatur Rahman 1, 2 and Saiful Azad 1, 2 1 Faculty of Computer Systems & Software Engineering University Malaysia Pahang Kuantan, Malaysia 2 IBM Center of Excellence University Malaysia Pahang, Malaysia ishak860825@gmail.com, arafatur@ump.edu.my and saifulazad@ump.edu.my Abstract—A social network is a type of media that allows users to engage social interaction in the cyber world. Nowadays, this network becomes a backbone of the digital communication world as it transformed the way of information being shared across the different communities. Exploiting this network, people can easily share huge volume of information (e.g., text, audio and video) without paying any charge that runs to gain overwhelming popularity of it. Nevertheless, it is an important issue for the users to select the privacy options for their information, resulting in the decision making on who can access the information and how the information should be used. This decision can be made via privacy management features within the social networks’ applications. However, the lack of study to explain the perceived use of privacy policies and management features, among social networks’ users, has conjured up the significant concerns about how social network users felt about the use of these features in social networks. To address this issue, in this paper, an empirical study has been conducted to seek for users’ feedbacks on the use of existing privacy policies and management features of social networks. These feedback assist in improving further the social network users' privacy features. Keywords-Social networks; social media; privacy management; privacy policy I. INTRODUCTION A social network is an internet based application such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WhatsApp that permits internet users to establish connections and form groups among the other internet users. Recently, a social network is not solely utilized for social purposes, but likewise, it can be applied for recruitment, advertisement, collaboration and marketing purpose. As a matter of fact, most of the social network users had no idea that they have revealed plenty of their sensitive information to others [1]. As far as we concern, social networks are designed to collect personal data from its users [2] so, it seems no surprise that social network users frequently update their information on social networks. Due to the ability to possess multiple accounts on social networks [3, 4], the probability of information leakage and misuse is more oft. Nowadays, social network becomes a backbone to the digital communication world as it transformed the way of information being shared across the different communities. Throughout the social networks, people can easily share unlimited volume of information such as multimedia files with free of charges. As the social networks gained its overwhelming popularity, the amount of information shared through social networks is on the lift. Due to the richness of information on social networks, it is important for the information’s owners to select the best privacy options for their information, resulting in the decision making on who can access the information and how the information should be used. The quest for the information privacy settings on social networks has led to the broad use of privacy policies and privacy management features. In fact, the privacy policies inform users about how their information is being employed. In extension to the use of privacy policies, users are afforded the freedom to decide whether to disclose or to hide their information. This decision can be achieved via privacy management features within the social networks’ applications. However, the lack of study to explain the perceived use of privacy policies and privacy management features, among social networks’ users, has raised significant concerns about the perceptions of social networks’ users of the use of privacy policies and privacy management features in social networks. In reference to this problem, most of the previous work [5, 6, 3] preferably focused on technical aspects rather than assessing users’ feedback on the use of existing privacy management features and privacy policies on social networks. Thus, an empirical study has been designed to seek for users’ feedback on the use of existing privacy policies and privacy management features in social networks. The outcome of this paper assists to improve further the existing social networks’ privacy features by considering the real demands and experiences of social networks’ users. In this paper, we explain the most common online privacy issues of social networks in Section II. Subsequently, Section III describes the issues pertaining to the privacy policy use, while Section IV provides the comparison of privacy features in the particular social network platforms. The rest of this paper, Section V explains the use of encryption and watermarking as the additional privacy features of social networks, while Section VI explains the research methodology. The results of the survey are discussed in section VII. Lastly, this paper concludes the study findings and proposes the future recommendations. II. THE ISSUES IN SOCIAL NETWORKS’ ONLINE PRIVACY The social network is a virtual representation of a person, which people disclose a lot of their personal and employment information. The diversity and richness of information within the social networks have attracted continuous attempts to reveal others’ information illegally. Under certain