Patent ID: 8495709

Claim:
A method for secure communication among members of social networking sites, comprising: receiving at a server computer in a computing environment a post from an end user in the computing environment, wherein the server computer handles for the computing environment all traffic to and from the social networking sites and wherein the social networking sites are external to and not controlled by the computing environment; determining at the server computer whether the post is for one of the social networking sites; if the post is not for any of the social networking sites, forwarding the post without modification by the server computer to a destination associated with the post; if the post is for a first social networking site, wherein the first social networking site is one of the social networking sites, determining at the server computer whether the post contains confidential information to be shared only among authorized users; if the post does not contain the confidential information, forwarding the post without modification by the server computer to the first social networking site; if the post does contain the confidential information, performing a protective action at the server computer to generate secured data and forwarding the secured data generated from the protective action to the first social networking site in place of the post from the end user; receiving at the server computer a request from the first social networking site intended for the end user in the computing environment; determining at the server computer whether the request contains protected information; if the request from the first social networking site does not contain the protected information, forwarding the request without modification by the server computer to the end user; if the request from the first social networking site does contain the protected information, determining at the server computer whether the end user is one of the authorized users; if the end user is not one of the authorized users, forwarding the request without modification by the server computer to the end user, wherein the end user views the protected information contained in the request as sent by the first social networking site; and if the end user is one of the authorized users, desecuring the protected information at the server computer and forwarding desecured data to the end user, wherein the end user views the desecured data in the computing environment.