Security and privacy in mobile social network [Editor´s Note]

Social networks extending the social circles of users have become an important integral part of our daily lives. With social networking tools, we are able to easily share information, images, and videos with our friends, and search for desirable service information with recommendations. As reported by ComScore, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have reached 82 percent of the world´s online population, representing 1.2 billion users around the world. In the meantime, fueled by the dramatic advancements of smartphones and the ubiquitous connections of Internet, social networking is further becoming available to mobile users and keeps them posted on up-to-date worldwide news and messages from their friends and families anytime, anywhere. The eMarketer estimates that up to 46 percent of mobile users will access their social networks with smartphones in 2014, while this number was merely 16 percent in 2010. It is envisioned that, with the growing number of smartphone users, a pervasive and omnipotent communication platform, the mobile social network (MSN), will become mainstream where smartphone users have extensive methods, from browsing over the Internet to querying nearby peers to obtain desired information.