A Review of User Identity Linkage Across Social Networks
Danna Lu, Qing Li, Zikang Liu, Shumei Li, Xiaobo Wu, Shudong Li · 2023
With the rapid development of social networks, the services provided by social platforms are becoming more and more diversified, which attracts many people to participate in different social network. If the accounts of the same user in different social networks can be identified, a more comprehensive information about the user can be integrated. Therefore, some hidden information can be unearthed and a complete user profile can be formed, making it better applied to recommendation systems and network security. User identity linkage aims to identify accounts belonging to the same natural person across social networks, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. In this paper, we discuss the current research and development trend of user identity linkage. First, we introduce the basic concepts and the user information used in this technology. Then we summarize the existing techniques based on attributes, generated content, and social relationships. Further we list several common evaluation metrics. Finally, we provide several promising research directions for the future.