Patent ID: 8875308

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a designation of a relative privacy level for a user; receiving a selection of a group of other users for the user, wherein the other users within the selected group have individual privacy level values, and wherein the relative privacy level for the user corresponds to a user-specified level, relative to the individual privacy level values of the selected group, at which to set privacy level values for the user; and setting, using one or more processors, the privacy level values for the user based on the designation of the relative privacy level and the individual privacy level values of the selected group of other users, wherein setting the privacy level values for the user comprises: ranking the other users within the selected group based on the respective individual privacy level values for the other users; selecting from the ranked other users, one of the other users based on the relative privacy level for the user; and setting the privacy level values for the user using the individual privacy level values of the selected other user.