A Tale of Three Social Networks: User Activity Comparisons across Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare

Despite recent efforts to characterize online social network (OSN) structures and activities, user behavior across different OSNs has received little attention. Yet such information could provide insight into issues relating to personal privacy protection. For instance, many Foursquare users reveal their Facebook and Twitter accounts to the public. The authors' in-depth measurement study examines users' network activities and privacy settings across Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. Results show that user activities are highly correlated among these three OSNs, which causes information leakage for a large fraction of Foursquare users.