Towards sender accountability on email infrastructure using sender identity and reputation management

Email Infrastructure has grown exponentially, since the early days of ARPANET, to support millions of users. However, the extensive adoption of the original open design has led to security implications. As claimed in recent statistics, about 95% of the emails are unsolicited and place phishing losses at $500 million. Even though, current email-filtering technologies weed out most of the incoming spam, there is a need to hold senders accountable for their email behavior. Without sender accountability, there is no way to hold senders responsible for their online email behavior. Holding senders accountable helps identify senders who propagate spam, and possibly reduce the spam transmitted. Holding a sender accountable for the sender’s online activity requires: first, the sender’s identification; and second, maintenance of its historical email activity. Today, widely deployed sender identity techniques counteract email spoofing by authenticating the sender's email server to the receiver organizations. Unfortunately, these techniques are not as effective as originally intended as: a) the senders create their own identity; b) spam-propagating senders have adopted these technologies. Knowledge of the sender's identity alone does not guarantee its adherence to email best practices. Towards establishing sender accountability, this dissertation proposes RepuScore, a collaborative reputation framework that allows participating receiver organizations to share sender's behavioral patterns. In addition, this dissertation also explores Privilege Messaging (P-Messaging) framework, a fine-granular sender- authorization framework where each sender holds a set of credentials (privileges) to send an email; the receivers verify the attached credentials before accepting the emails. P- Messaging attempts to maintain trust among organizations with the help of a central authority, which periodically verifies the participating organization's adherence to good email practices. To create a long-standing history, participating organizations locally collect information about the senders - from users or existing spam classification mechanisms that are submitted to a central RepuScore authority - to compute a global reputation summary. This dissertation discusses the distributed architecture and the algorithms designed to compute reputation based on the sender's a) spam rate (RepuScore) or b) spam rate and email volume (Volume-Enhanced RepuScore). Additionally, the dissertation shares findings from experiments based on a RepuScore prototype using a) simulation logs; and b) deployed SpamAssassin plug-in since 10/9/2007 at three organizations. Based on the deployment, reputation for about 90,000 sender identities and about 12 million IP addresses as of Feb 2009 have been computed. We note that email classification using RepuScore is 97.8% accurate. Finally, this dissertation discusses future directions for Distributed RepuScore that allows organizations to maintain their personal reputation view to be shared among trusted peers. Distributed RepuScore enables a global reputation view while holding senders accountable at each organization instead of deploying it at a central authority

The Internet Users and Cybercrime in Ghana: Evidence from Senior High School in Brong Ahafo Region

Cybercrime, an offence that is committed against individuals through the internet has bedeviled the global online industry. Cybercrime is also criminal activity using internet facilities such as virus infections, identity theft and hacking. There is high risk of becoming a victim especially young internet user. All efforts to combat it have not worked much. The study examined the awareness of Senior High School students towards cybercrime in order to suggest policies to deal with this menace. The study underpinned by social strain theory. The study employed descriptive survey design. Simple sampling technique was used to select 200 students from Sunyani Senior High School. Questionnaire was used in eliciting responses. The study revealed that the major forms of cybercrime were hacking, credit card fraud, software piracy and cyber identity theft. Again, the study indicated that the major consequences involved in engaging in cybercrime are inimical to the progress and development of a country and tarnishing the country reputation. Gender had no significant influence on the knowledge of students towards cybercrime. We recommended that cybercrime court should be established in Ghana to speed up prosecution of cybercriminals and encourage more judges and lawyers to specialize in cyber law

Corporate social responsibility: a myth? The example of the 'Round Table Codes of Conduct' in Germany

This paper is concerned with why and how multinational companies (MNCs) voluntarily engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), especially in social standards. The first part describes the prevailing perspectives on the CSR debate. Then, with the New Institutionalism in Sociology, an alternative view on CSR is discussed. The third part develops the argument that the ‘traditional’ rational institutional myth developed by Meyer and Rowan should be replaced or supplemented by a CSR myth. After that, the case study of “Round Table Codes of Conduct” provides an example of how MNCs deal with this emerging CSR myth

Airline Ticket E-Reservation: Adoption Among Malaysians

Sistem tempahan tiket penerbangan telah banyak direvolusikan oleh syarikat-syarikat penerbangan melalui penggunaan Internet dan pengenalan alat-alat mudah alih moden. The air ticket reservation system has been much revolutionized by the airline companies through the usage of the Internet and introduction of modern mobile devices

Culture and e-commerce: An exploration of the perceptions and attitudes of Egyptian internet users

This paper examines the perceptions and attitudes that Egyptian users hold towards electronic shopping sites. Internet sites are globally available, opening up huge potential markets for online retailers. However, it remains unclear whether sites designed for the US or European markets will be acceptable in other cultures. This paper describes an exploratory card sorting study conducted with Egyptian consumers. The study was designed to examine the e-commerce interface features that are most salient to this user group and to explore how these relate to user intentions to engage in internet shopping. The results support the role of site familiarity in predicting purchase intentions within this cultural setting

Taiwan's Democracy: Towards a liberal democracy or authoritarianism?

This paper examines how Taiwan moved from being viewed as a model Asian democracy to one allegedly suffering from democratic reversal. The reasons for the declining domestic and international reputa- tion of Taiwan’s democracy are discussed. Lastly, some key political challenges facing Taiwan’s democracy are outlined

Trust models in ubiquitous computing

We recapture some of the arguments for trust-based technologies in ubiquitous computing, followed by a brief survey of some of the models of trust that have been introduced in this respect. Based on this, we argue for the need of more formal and foundational trust models

Strategic Communications and Corporate Branding: a Study of Jebsen & Jessen Indonesia Group

Corporate communications hold a vital function to maintain the company's positive image and reputation in front of stakeholders. A corporate communications practitioner must be able to handle a variety of communication processes in an organization, including to determine the right strategy to reach its communications goal. The purpose of this research is to analyze the corporate communications strategy of Jebsen & Jessen Indonesia Group to create its corporate branding and reflect it with public relations strategic planning process. The researcher gathered the primary data from in-depth interview with key informant and combine it with secondary data from other relevant data. Afterwards, it was verified by triangulation to strengthen the credibility of data and continue with analysis process. This research concluded that Jebsen & Jessen Indonesia Group has implemented its corporate branding strategy accordingly to public relations strategic planning process. Some of the targets have been achieved in one year period, however there have been suggestions to improve the future corporate branding strategy formation

Do UK universities communicate their brands effectively through their websites?

This paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of UK universities’ websites. The area of branding in higher education has received increasing academic investigation, but little work has researched how universities demonstrate their brand promises through their websites. The quest to differentiate through branding can be challenging in the university context, however. It is argued that those institutions that have a strong distinctive image will be in a better position to face a changing future. Employing a multistage methodology, the web pages of twenty UK universities were investigated by using a combination of content and multivariable analysis. Results indicated ‘traditional values’ such as teaching and research were often well communicated in terms of online brand but ‘emotional values’ like social responsibility and the universities’ environments were less consistently communicated, despite their increased topicality. It is therefore suggested that emotional values may offer a basis for possible future online differentiation