Implementation of the project on privacy protection of social network data is planned for 3 years.

Russian Foundation for Basic Research awarded RUB 5,1 million (USD 71, 739.10) funding to the Data Science and Information Systems Lab of Innopolis University to develop the design technique for the representative large-scale networks sampling.

Sadegh Nobari, a senior research fellow of Innopolis University will act as the principal investigator and research developer. In the project framework, research group will develop methods of large random static and dynamic networks parallel generation. This research will help to solve the problem of personal data protection in social networks. Besides, it will serve as a tool to derive mathematic models in the theory of computing systems. In future, research results can be used to scale the process of network generation.

According to Sadegh Nobari, the project author, “information in the social networks can have either a positive or a negative effect”. The research fellow of Innopolis University shared some details about the research: “Our goal is to protect confidential data. Each user has various preferences in terms of personal data distribution. We are to find the way to guarantee a reliable protection of sensitive information. For instance, if a user is not willing to disclose his/her connections/relationships to another individual/organization/place, this information must be fully protected. So far, our aim is to protect any unwilling/unintentional disclosure of such "sensitive" information”.