An anonymous peer-to-peer based online social network

Online social networks (OSN) have now become one of the most widely used Internet applications with a huge base of online users. In an OSN, the users exchange their personal information via messages, pictures and videos with their online peers/friends for their personal or business interests. Since the information that flows across an OSN is generally of personal in nature, it is important that the users get the assurance that their personal information is kept private to a level that they desire. In this paper, we first analyze a distributed OSN framework called Safebook, in which the privacy of the users' information is preserved. As part of our analysis, we also suggest improvements to some of the approaches followed in Safebook in achieving its features. We then apply the techniques of threshold cryptography to Safebook for achieving reliability and onion routing for user anonymity thereby enhancing the security and performance of Safebook.