The Complex Case of Online Privacy for Iranian Users of Social Networks

While social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are censored within the Iranian network, the number of Iranian users that use such services is facing an outsized growth. As a result, an increasing number of Iranian users have taken the habit of using some type of anti-censorship tool to access blocked content, which is an act against the Iranian ICT laws by itself. At the same time, each year numerous cases of identity theft, robberies, harassment and alike are reported in countries such as United States that happen due to both technical glitches/misconfigurations by the service provider and the inconsiderate behavior of users when using those services. As a matter of fact, countries such as UK and US are making efforts to increase peoples’ awareness about required security and privacy precautions and enact laws that support user’s right of having online security and privacy. However, relevant literature review indicates that the Iranian authorities are mainly focusing on preventing and discouraging the use of social network tools and are unwilling to accept the increasing usage yet. In this paper we present our survey results among 511 Facebook users residing in Iran, which shows that Iranian users have a very limited knowledge about potential privacy and security risks of using anti-censorship tools and online social networks such as Facebook. We conduct a risk analysis based on surveyed facts and suggest recommendations on how to improve this condition.

Keywords:

Privacy , Social Networks , Internet Filtering , Anti-censorship tool