For the consensus of privacy-aware social network users, the distribution of personal information has become a radically sensitive topic, raising eyebrows and worrying concerns about the unrestrained possibilities of third party data acquisition.

Nevertheless, Duke University assistant professor Landon Cox recognizes the complex privacy problem issues on social media giants such as Facebook, Myspace, and even YouTube and Twitter. He explains that when people post pictures or political opinions to share with friends, they are actually running all of this data directly through the owners of the networks as well.

According to Cox, “A disgruntled employee could leak information about social network users. My concern is that [users] are under the control of a central entity.”

The professor is currently seeking alternative ways to distribute personal social media content by restricting or even entirely bypassing content access to the network operating servers. In perspective, the ideal solution would be to engineer a “peer-to-peer” network infrastructure where personal information is entirely spread out in various locations. This approach is almost identical in context to BitTorrent and many other peer-to-peer file sharing protocols.

“The basic idea is that users would control and store their own information and then share it directly with their friends instead of it being mediated through a site like Facebook. And there are some interesting challenges that go along with decomposing something like Facebook into a peer-to-peer system.”

There are currently three approaches that are being held in discussion to seek an ideal solution architecture. In each case, social network users would load their personal information into what is known as a “Virtual Individual Server,” or VIS.

The first approach would be for a user to host his or her Virtual Independent Server on their desktop. However, the main issue is that a user’s computer would stay on continuously as the information would not be available otherwise.

The second approach would be to distribute VIS data within redundant server “clouds” similar to those offered by Amazon’s EC2 service. However, the problem with this suggestion is that a single cloud server can run anywhere upwards of $50 per month.

The third and most reasonable approach would be to compromise both concepts into a single solution known as “hybrid decentralization.” As the name states, a user’s VIS would be kept on the desktop until the computer is shut down, where it would then instantaneously migrate to the more costly and reliable cloud distribution option.

AT&T Labs in Florham Park, New Jersey and the National Science Foundation currently supply funds for Duke University’s research on this subject.

The media release can be found here.