Implementation of A System for Cohesive and Secure Community Management

Misuse of private data by Facebook has highlighted the dangers of unrestricted access to centralised user profiles by service providers. While decentralised online social networks (OSN can address concerns over privacy through the distribution of data across many peers, they give rise to issues of security and trust. It is argued that the cohesion and fluidity of a community and the management of its privacy and security can be addressed by a hybrid system, which overcomes the limitations of centralised and decentralised OSNs. This paper is concerned with the design and implementation of an unstructured P2P system enhanced by centralised schemes to support community management, without detriment to performance and reliability. Peers are subjected to an identification and authentication process, and membership of a community is constrained by trust levels. The hybrid system was implemented as a layered architecture, which incorporates file sharing at the application level, community management and trust management at social level, and security management and network management at systemic level. Simulation results generated for mature and stable communities confirm the viability of the approach.