Safety Challenges and Solutions in Mobile Social Networks

Mobile social networks (MSNs) are specific types of social media which consolidate the ability of omnipresent connection for mobile users/devices to share user-centric data objects among interested users. Taking advantage of the characteristics of both social networks and opportunistic networks (OppNets), MSNs are capable of providing an efficient and effective mobile environment for users to access, share, and distribute data. However, the lack of a protective infrastructure in these networks has turned them into convenient targets for various perils. This is the main impulse why MSNs carry disparate and intricate safety concerns and embrace divergent safety challenging problems. In this paper, we aim to provide a clear categorization on safety challenges and a deep exploration over some recent solutions in MSNs. This work narrows the safety challenges and solution techniques down from OppNets and delay-tolerant networks to MSNs with the hope of covering all the work proposed around security, privacy, and trust in MSNs. To conclude, several major open research issues are discussed, and future research directions are outlined.

I. Introduction

THE INCREASE in the number of mobile devices has enabled users to be ubiquitously connected through wireless and mobile communications technologies. However, unlike conventional mobile ad hoc networks, persistent connectivity is not a necessity in every type of network. This has led to a totally progressive kind of social network called mobile social networks (MSNs). MSNs can be viewed as modern kinds of delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) in which mobile users interact with each other to share user-centric data objects among interested observers.