Online User Interaction Traits in Web-Based Social Biometrics

Abstract

During the Internet era, millions of users are using Web-based Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter for communication needs. Social networking platforms are now considered a source of big data because of real-time activities of a large number of users. In addition to idiosyncratic personal characteristics, web-based social data may include person-to-person communication, profiles, patterns, and spatio-temporal information. However, analysis of social interaction-based data has not been studied from the perspective of person identification. In this chapter, the authors introduce for the first time the concept of using interaction-based features from online social networking platforms as a novel biometric. They introduce the concept of social behavioral biometric from SNSs to aid the identification process. Analysis of these novel biometric features and their potential use in various security and authentication applications are also presented. Such applications would pave the way for new directions in biometric research.