The Dilemma of Trust: a Social Network Based Approach

Trust is essential in human interaction and this naturally reflects within computer science context, in particular inside internet-based communities. In this work we present an approach based on social networks, which revealed several useful properties, as the small world effect, that can be usefully exploited in addressing the question of trust. We aim at reproducing the behaviour individuals adopt in their life when they establish and maintain trust relationships, sending queries to collect reputations in order to estimate how much trust in new acquaintances. We also consider issues as query forwarding and lifecycle of trusting relationships, aiming at building an effective and efficient model for trust management.