On Helping Individuals to Manage Privacy and Trust

Being able to say with absolute certainty that another party can be trusted to handle personal information with today’s technology is probably unrealistic. In this paper we explain an approach to establishing trust based on the status of a remote platform and an anticipated willingness of the other party to comply with prior negotiated obligations. Ongoing monitoring and notification, and the ability of the individual to form a simple record of past interaction, provides the individual with greater confidence in situations where they need to share personal sensitive information with organisations they would otherwise not be able to claim they trust. We describe the principles of our approach and architectures that support a practical implementation.