Toward a game theoretic model of information release in social media with experimental results

Social sites frequently ask for rich sets of user identity properties before granting access. Users are given the freedom to fail to respond to some of these requests, or can choose to submit fake identity properties, so as to reduce the risk of identification, surveillance or observation of any kind. However, this freedom has led to serious security and privacy incidents, due to the role users' identities play in establishing social and privacy settings. In this paper, we take a step toward addressing this open problem, by analyzing the dynamics of social identity verification protocols. Based on some real-world data, we develop a deception model for online users. The model takes a game theoretic approach to characterizing a user's willingness to release, withhold or lie about information depending on the behavior of individuals within the user's circle of friends. We provide an illustrative example and conjecture a relationship between the qualitative structure of Nash equilibria in the game and the auto orphism group of the social network.