Private cloud and media privacy in social networks

Privacy rules imposed by social networks (SNs) impose several restrictions to user privacy. Though they usually offer the user some control to limit access to his own data, the social network may share uploaded data with other partners and marketing companies. Pictures and videos may have a second life, even after being deleted by the user, and consequently storage and access must take place in the user home domain or facilities managed by the user, following an end to end approach. We propose to combine the usage of private clouds, specialized in media contents, in cooperation with SNs, offering the user complete control over his data, while benefiting from the SNs visibility to announce and spread the data. To achieve transparency, we propose a plug-in system to embed links as annotations in reduced media replacement uploaded in the SN. These links point to the real resource stored in the private cloud, now under complete user control. We perform validation tests which show important improvements in uploading time and user experience.