156 Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2012 Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Critical parameters for privacy preservation through anonymisation in social networks Preeti Gupta*, Sanur Sharma and Vishal Bhatnagar Ambedkar Institute of Advanced Communication Technologies and Research, Geeta Colony, Delhi-110031, India Fax: 91-11-22048044 E-mail: preeti.cool80@gmail.com E-mail: sanursharma@yahoo.co.in E-mail: vishalbhatnagar@yahoo.com *Corresponding author Abstract: As social network data contain sensitive information, the need arises for privacy preservation of released social network data for which the most deployed technique is anonymisation. There are a number of anonymisation techniques which have been proposed for privacy preservation in social network data. Not all the anonymisation techniques have been able to provide the desired privacy as they ignore one or more critical parameters. The purpose of this paper is to propose the parameters for anonymisation of released social network data based on the cross-pollination of information related to anonymisation of social network data. Analysing the anonymisation techniques on these parameters would provide a clear understanding in a more realist dimension. These parameters would help the service provider of the social network for choosing the suitable anonymisation technique. These parameters would also help the future researchers to design or improve the anonymisation technique for privacy preservation in social network. Keywords: parameters; anonymisation; privacy preservation; social network. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Gupta, P., Sharma, S. and Bhatnagar, V. (2012) ‘Critical parameters for privacy preservation through anonymisation in social networks’, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.156–172. Biographical notes: Preeti Gupta received her BTech in Computer-Science and Engineering from Kurukshetra University, Haryana, India in 2001 and is currently pursuing MTech in Information Security from Ambedkar Institute of Advanced Communication Technologies and Research, GGSIPU, Delhi, India. She has worked as Lecturer from 2001 to 2005 and is currently working with Government of India as Scientist. Her research interests include network traffic analysis (botnets, social networks), tracking of cyber-attacks/crimes and Malware analysis. She had her paper accepted in International Journal of Social Network Mining (IJSNM). Sanur Sharma received her BTech in Computer-Science and Engineering from GGSIPU, Delhi, India in 2010 and is pursuing MTech in Information Security from Ambedkar Institute of Advanced Communication Technologies and Research, GGSIPU, Delhi, India. Her research interests include database, data warehouse, data-mining, and social network analysis. She had her paper accepted in International journal of Social Network Mining (IJSNM).