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US 8,713,645 B2Granted
Authentication for social networking messages
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsLisa Seacat DeLuca, Jenny S. Li
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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsLisa Seacat DeLuca, Jenny S. Li
Estimating the term…
A tool for verifying that a message received by a social networking service was sent by a bona fide owner of a social networking account who purportedly sent the message. The tool receives a message and it locates in the message a string that was entered into a message text field of the message. The string is compared with a registered authentication string for the bona fide owner of the account. If the string in the message matches the registered authentication string, the string is removed from the message and the message is forwarded to the social networking service. If the string in the message does not match the registered authentication string, the message is blocked from being forwarded to the social networking service.
A method for verifying that a message received by a social networking service was sent by a bona fide owner of a social networking account who purportedly sent the message, the method comprising the steps of:
A computer program product for verifying that a message received by a social networking service was sent by a bona fide owner of a social networking account who purportedly sent the message, the computer program product comprising:
A computer system for verifying that a message received by a social networking service was sent by a bona fide owner of a social networking account who purportedly sent the message, the computer system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
For authentication of entities: using passwords
For authentication of entities: using biometrical features, e.g. fingerprint, retina-scan
Authentication: using credential vaults, e.g. password manager applications or one time password [OTP] applications
Context-dependent security: gesture-dependent or behaviour-dependent
About 5 years 5 months of term left · ends 15 Mar 2032 (estimated)
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The present invention relates generally to social networking and more specifically to the authentication of the sender of a social networking message.
Social networking is the interaction between people to share information, ideas, resources and interests. A popular form of social networking uses social networking services over the Internet. A social networking service allows a person to become a “user,” create a profile (description of the user) for the user's web page, communicate with other users, or utilize a range of other services available through the social network service. Examples of popular social networking services are Facebook® (Registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.) social networking services and Twitter® (Registered trademark of Twitter, Inc.) social networking services.
Users of Facebook social networking services and Twitter social networking services communicate with other users of the service through “social networking messages,” which are messages sent to the social networking service that can be made available to the general public, all users of the service, or to a select set of friends or followers.
FIG. 1 depicts a diagram of a computing system in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 depicts a flowchart of the steps of a social networking message authentication program executing within the computing system of FIG. 1, for verifying that a string in a social networking message contains the authentication string of a user, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is an exemplary interface to a social networking service program.
The present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the figures.
FIG. 1 depicts a diagram of a computing system 10 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 1 provides only an illustration of one embodiment and does not imply any limitations with regard to the environments in which different embodiments may be implemented.
In the depicted embodiment, system 10 includes user computing device 40 and social networking server 30 interconnected over network 20. Network 20 may be a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet, a combination of the two or any combination of connections and protocols that will support communications between user computing device 40 and social networking server 30 in accordance with embodiments of the invention. Network 20 may include wired, wireless, or fiber optic connections.