ESTABLISHING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN ACCOUNTS MAINTAINED BY AN ONLINE SYSTEM AND THIRD PARTY ACCOUNTS MAINTAINED BY THIRD PARTY SYSTEMS

摘要

Online system users interact with one or more third party systems, with the online system maintaining an account for each of its users and each third party system maintaining a third party account for each of its users. The online system compares information in a user's account to accessible information in third party accounts and establishes connections between the user's account and o third party accounts based on the comparisons. A connection between the user's account and a third party account includes a confidence level indicating a likelihood of the third party account being associated with the user of the online system corresponding to the account. A third party system may request information from the online system about a user specifying a threshold confidence level, allowing the online system to return information from third party accounts having connections to the user's account with at least the threshold confidence level.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
maintaining accounts associated with various users of an online system, an account associated with a user including information associated with the user; identifying one or more third party systems, each third party system maintaining third party accounts associated with various users of the third party system and including information associated with the users of the third party system; selecting an account associated with the user of the online system; establishing connections between the selected account and one or more third party accounts maintained by one or more third party systems, a connection between the selected account and a third party account based at least in part on information associated with the selected account and information associated with the third party account and the connection between the selected account and the third party account including a confidence level of the user associated with the selected account matching the user associated with the third party account; maintaining one or more rules limiting access to information associated with users of one or more third party systems by the online system; receiving, at the online system, a request for information from a third party system associated with the user of the online system, the request including a threshold confidence level; determining a confidence level associated with a connection between the selected account associated with the user and a third party account maintained by an additional third party system equals or exceeds the threshold confidence level included in the request; and obtaining the information identified by the request from the third party account maintained by the additional third party system subject to one or more rules maintained by the online system limiting access to information associated with users of the additional third party system.