On the social web content is no longer generated by a small number of established authorities but by a huge number of mostly anonymous users. On the semantic web new content is created by combining existing information from different sources on the fly. In both cases trust is of fundamental importance. Is the user providing new content trustworthy? How trustworthy is information inferred from s...

SAFE is a data-centric platform for building multi-domain networked systems, i.e., systems whose participants are controlled by different principals. Participants make trust decisions by issuing local queries over logic content exchanged in certificates. The contribution of SAFE is to address a key barrier to practical use of logical trust: the problem of identifying, gathering, and assembling ...

This study utilizes a processing tracing method to explore the processes of trust formation in web-based productbrokering recommendation agents (RAs). We compare and contrast the processes of trust/distrust formation in an attribute-based RA (a typical content-based RA) versus a need-based RA (a content-based RA plus need-based questions). Concurrent verbal protocols from 49 subjects were colle...

As it gets easier to add information to the web via html pages, wikis, blogs, and other documents, it gets tougher to distinguish accurate or trustworthy information from inaccurate or untrustworthy information. Moreover, apart from inaccurate or untrustworthy information, we also need to anticipate web spam – where spammers publish false facts and scams to deliberately mislead users. Creating ...

Collaborative functionality is increasingly prevalent in Internet applications. Such functionality permits individuals to add -and sometimes modify -web content, often with minimal barriers to entry. Ideally, large bodies of knowledge can be amassed and shared in this manner. However, such software also provides a medium for biased individuals, spammers, and nefarious persons to operate. By com...

PROTECTING SENSITIVE CREDENTIAL CONTENT DURING TRUST NEGOTIATION Ryan D. Jarvis Department of Computer Science Master of Science Keeping sensitive information private in a public world is a common concern to users of digital credentials. A digital credential may contain sensitive attributes certifying characteristics about its owner. X.509v3, the most widely used certificate standard, includes ...

Scholars who study trust in digital archives have largely focused their attention on the power of certification by third-party audit as a way to communicate trustworthiness to end-users. In doing so, they assume that the establishment of a network of trusted digital archives will create a climate of trust. But certification at the repository level also assumes the trustworthiness of digital obj...

Using recent technologies such as Bluetooth, mobile users can share digital content (e.g., photos, videos) with other users in proximity. However, to reduce the cognitive load on mobile users, it is important that only appropriate content is stored and presented to them. This dissertation examines the feasibility of having mobile users filter out irrelevant content by running trust models. A tr...