I-Corps: An Outsourced and Completely Private Social Network: You&Me

当前，在现有社交网络上发布或存储的任何数据对于社交网络提供商是可见的。一旦用户在社交网络上发布消息或存储个人信息，社交网络服务提供商将如何使用数据就不再由用户控制。在过去的几年里，许多媒体组织一直认为某些提供商可能会将用户个人资料数据出售给第三方广告商以赚取利润。在这样的批评之后，用户变得更加关心他们的隐私，这给他们留下了一个严重的问题，即是否可以认真信任任何社交网络提供商。 由于用户个人资料数据驻留在社交网络提供商的服务器上，用户无法验证提供商是否严格执行用户的隐私政策。I-Corps团队目前正在开发You Me的原型系统&。它结合了首席研究员以前研究项目中产生的安全技术，现有的开源数据库管理系统，和开源用户界面开发包来实现You& Me。到目前为止，该团队已经完成了基本的软件架构和组件，并开始实现基本功能。在这个项目的最后，团队希望有一个原型系统的基本版本作为演示。该原型系统将向潜在投资者展示You Me如何充分保护用户隐私，同时用户仍然可以享受与现有社交网络相同或非常相似的功能。

Currently, any data posted or stored on the existing social networks are visible to the social network providers. Once a user posts a message or stores personal information on a social network, it is no longer in the control of the user how the data will be used by the social network service providers. In the past few years, many media organizations have been arguing that certain providers are probably selling user profile data to third-party advertisers to make profits. In the wake of such criticisms, users become more concerned about their privacy leaving them with a serious question as to whether or not any social network provider can be seriously trusted. Since the user profile data reside on the servers of a social network provider, there is no way for a user to verify whether the provider is strictly enforcing the user's privacy policies.The I-Corps team is currently working on a prototype system of You&Me. It combines the secure techniques generated from the principal investigator's previous research project, the existing open source database management systems, and open source user interface development packages to implement You&Me. So far, the team has finalized the basic software architecture and components and started implementing the fundamental features. At the end of this project, the team expects to have the basic version of the prototype system as a demo. The prototype system will show potential investors how You&Me can fully protect user privacy, and at the same time, the users can still enjoy the same or very similar functionalities as the existing social networks.