Local and Global Trust Based on the Concept of Promises

We use the notion of a promise to define local trust between agents possessing autonomous decision-making. An agent is trustworthy if it is expected that it will keep a promise. This definition satisfies most commonplace meanings of trust. Reputation is then an estimation of this expectation value that is passed on from agent to agent. Our definition distinguishes types of trust, for different behaviours, and decouples the concept of agent reliability from the behaviour on which the judgement is based. We show, however, that trust is fundamentally heuristic, as it provides insufficient information for agents to make a rational judgement. A global trustworthiness, or community trust can be defined by a proportional, self-consistent voting process, as a weighted eigenvector-centrality function of the promise theoretical graph

Reputational Privacy and the Internet: A Matter for Law?

Reputation - we all have one. We do not completely comprehend its workings and are mostly unaware of its import until it is gone. When we lose it, our traditional laws of defamation, privacy, and breach of confidence rarely deliver the vindication and respite we seek due, primarily, to legal systems that cobble new media methods of personal injury onto pre-Internet laws. This dissertation conducts an exploratory study of the relevance of law to loss of individual reputation perpetuated on the Internet. It deals with three interrelated concepts: reputation, privacy, and memory. They are related in that the increasing lack of privacy involved in our online activities has had particularly powerful reputational effects, heightened by the Internet’s duplicative memory. The study is framed within three research questions: 1) how well do existing legal mechanisms address loss of reputation and informational privacy in the new media environment; 2) can new legal or extra-legal solutions fill any gaps; and 3) how is the role of law pertaining to reputation affected by the human-computer interoperability emerging as the Internet of Things? Through a review of international and domestic legislation, case law, and policy initiatives, this dissertation explores the extent of control held by the individual over her reputational privacy. Two emerging regulatory models are studied for improvements they offer over current legal responses: the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, and American Do Not Track policies. Underscoring this inquiry are the challenges posed by the Internet’s unique architecture and the fact that the trove of references to reputation in international treaties is not making its way into domestic jurisprudence or daily life. This dissertation examines whether online communications might be developing a new form of digital speech requiring new legal responses and new gradients of personal harm; it also proposes extra-legal solutions to the paradox that our reputational needs demand an overt sociality while our desire for privacy has us shunning the limelight. As we embark on the Web 3.0 era of human-machine interoperability and the Internet of Things, our expectations of the role of law become increasingly important

‘Putting everything up there’: framing how we navigate the intricacies of privacy and security on social media

Posting commentary via social media can have very real consequences, and these can drive how users navigate the world of social media. The aim of this article is to develop a deeper appreciation of how users comprehend their security and privacy within their social media interactions. I turn to Anderson’s work on street life in attempting to draw upon the decisions made in navigating particular environments—especially those with associated risks. This I argue is similar to how users rationalize their social media behavior to protect themselves and/or view others. Both are learned behaviors that are at times habituated, reactionary, or temporary in the face of heightened threats. Using findings from 27 interviews with UK social media users, I present three codes that may be useful in framing just how users navigate and comprehend their experiences of social media privacy and security

Two-tier Intrusion Detection System for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Nowadays, a commonly used wireless network (i.e. Wi-Fi) operates with the aid of a fixed infrastructure (i.e. an access point) to facilitate communication between nodes when they roam from one location to another. The need for such a fixed supporting infrastructure limits the adaptability of the wireless network, especially in situations where the deployment of such an infrastructure is impractical. In addition, Wi-Fi limits nodes' communication as it only provides facility for mobile nodes to send and receive information, but not reroute the information across the network. Recent advancements in computer network introduced a new wireless network, known as a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET), to overcome these limitations. MANET has a set of unique characteristics that make it different from other kind of wireless networks. Often referred as a peer to peer network, such a network does not have any fixed topology, thus nodes are free to roam anywhere, and could join or leave the network anytime they desire. Its ability to be setup without the need of any infrastructure is very useful, especially in geographically constrained environments such as in a military battlefield or a disaster relief operation. In addition, through its multi hop routing facility, each node could function as a router, thus communication between nodes could be made available without the need of a supporting fixed router or an access point. However, these handy facilities come with big challenges, especially in dealing with the security issues. This research aims to address MANET security issues by proposing a novel intrusion detection system that could be used to complement existing prevention mechanisms that have been proposed to secure such a network. A comprehensive analysis of attacks and the existing security measures proved that there is a need for an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to protect MANETs against security threats. The analysis also suggested that the existing IDS proposed for MANET are not immune against a colluding blackmail attack due to the nature of such a network that comprises autonomous and anonymous nodes. The IDS architecture as proposed in this study utilises trust relationships between nodes to overcome this nodes' anonymity issue. Through a friendship mechanism, the problems of false accusations and false alarms caused by blackmail attackers in global detection and response mechanisms could be eliminated. The applicability of the friendship concept as well as other proposed mechanisms to solve MANET IDS related issues have been validated through a set of simulation experiments. Several MANET settings, which differ from each other based on the network's density level, the number of initial trusted friends owned by each node, and the duration of the simulation times, have been used to study the effects of such factors towards the overall performance of the proposed IDS framework. The results obtained from the experiments proved that the proposed concepts are capable to at least minimise i f not fully eliminate the problem currently faced in MANET IDS

Social software for music

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 200

Reputation management in a digital world: The role of online information in the building, management, and evaluation of personal reputations

This work is concerned with the role of online information in the building, management, and evaluation of personal reputations. The main contributions of the research relate to: (1) the means by which people evaluate the personal reputations of others from the online evidence available to them, and (2) strategies for the building and management of personal reputations through the use of online information. The findings extend knowledge within the domain of Information Science, notably with respect to the established body of research on human information behaviour and use. They are set against a theoretical framework that is anchored to research in bibliometrics (for example on citation practice and citation analysis), and takes into account the multidisciplinary nature of the field of Information Science.A multi-step data collection process was implemented following the practice of extant studies in Information Science and human information behaviour and use. This focused on a sample of forty-five UK-based social media users. A qualitative analysis of data collected from participant diaries and interviews was undertaken using NVivo10.The main contribution of this work with respect to the evaluation of personal reputations on the basis on online evidence is that the information available is largely consumed and evaluated in a passive manner: social media users are more interested in the content of the information that is shared on social media platforms than they are in the signals that this information might convey about the sharer(s). Closer attention is paid in cases where the information shared is in stark contrast to the opinions and practices of those who consume it. In terms of the management of personal reputations through the use of online information, this work introduces and develops new concepts related to managing the “blur” that occurs at the intersection between private and professional lives, and online and offline environments