A Review of Security, Privacy, and Authentication Mechanisms in Social Media Web Applications
Keywords:
social media security, social media privacy, social media authentication, fake account detection, bot detection, phishing attacks, machine learning in cybersecurity, deep learning for social networks, privacy paradox, AI-driven privacy risks, Inference attacks, Data Governance, Multi-factor authentication (MFA), Single sign on (SSO), OAuth 2.0, PKCE, Identity verification, Social-technical security frameworks, cross-platform security evaluation, User Behavior in CybersecurityAbstract
Social media was never supposed to become this complicated. What started as a way to stay connected has turned into one of the most contested spaces in modern life where fake identities thrive, personal data gets harvested in ways users never agreed to, and the systems meant to verify who we are can barely keep up. Researchers have thrown a lot at these problems over the years, and there has been genuine progress. But an uncomfortable pattern keeps repeating itself, solutions that look great on paper tend to wobble once they hit the real world. The privacy paradox still has no clean answer. Detection models still break when moved between platforms. Authentication still trades security for convenience in ways nobody is fully happy with. Until the technical side of this work starts taking human behavior and policy seriously not as afterthoughts but as core design constraints, the same gaps will keep reappearing.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Dr. Ashwini Kumar Jha, Akil Khatri, Kavi Kanda, Areeb Haider, Raunak Shah (Author)
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