Cross-Platform Privacy Tool for Facebook: Architecture and Implementation

Abstract

Social media platforms like Facebook use behavioral profiling to drive personalized content and advertisements. It often comes at the expense of user privacy. There are existing tools that aim to block data collection, but they tools fail to address the behavioral profiling. This thesis presents an extended and modular reimplementation of MetaPriv. MetaPriv is a privacy focused tool designed to obfuscate users' profiles by injecting realistic yet irrelevant activity into social media interactions. The system is built as a cross-platform desktop application integrated with a secure backend and an experimental browser plugin for content filtering. There are limitations in the systems, and they are acknowledged and addressed through proposed future work. MetaPriv 2 aims to serve as a foundation for privacy-aware tools that empower users to reclaim control over their digital identities.