This paper introduces a micropayment mechanism suitable for Wireless Internet Access Providers. It is proposed that the users obtain the credentials that allow them to surf the web after sending a Premium-rated SMS, thus avoiding a direct payment relationship between the user and the WISP. Mobile users are familiar with Premium SMS and consider them a secure and convenient payment method, becau...

It is generally realized that the Internet will not be able to ooer full-edged electronic marketplace capabilities without a suitable electronic mechanism for processing payments. The electronic payment mechanism that is presented ooers a variety of features that are believed to be particularly appealing in this respect. To participate, an Internet user must interface to his computer a tamper-r...

BACKGROUND Following the 1988 World Health Assembly resolution to eradicate polio, the government of Nigeria, with support from partners, has been implementing several rounds of supplementary immunization activities (SIAs) each year. In addition to the technical requirements, the success of the polio eradication initiative depends on timely provision of adequate financial resources. Disbursemen...

We study a more powerful variant of false-name manipulation in Internet auctions: an agent can submit multiple false-name bids, but then, once the allocation and payments have been decided, withdraw some of her false-name identities (have some of her falsename identities refuse to pay). While these withdrawn identities will not obtain the items they won, their initial presence may have been ben...

We model situations in which a principal provides incentives to a group of agents to participate in a project (such as a social event or a commercial activity). Agents’ benefits from participation depend on the identity of other participating agents. We assume bilateral externalities and characterize the optimal incentive mechanism. Using a graph-theoretic approach we show that the optimal mech...

This work presents an Adaptively Secure Broadcast Mechanism (ASBM) based on threats analytics and case based reasoning. It defines the security intelligence of a broadcast system comprehensively with a novel concept of collective intelligence. The algorithmic mechanism is analyzed from the perspectives of security intelligence, communication complexity, computational intelligence and business i...

While anonymous payments are necessary for privacy reasons, they can as well be misused for criminal activities: Anonymous electronic cash can be used to conduct crimes that would be impossible with physical cash. As potential misuse of anonymity cannot be tolerated, the allowed anonymity has to be restricted. Payment systems with restricted anonymity are commonly based on the concept of a trus...

The Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) mechanism has been pursued as a means to provide incentives achieving conservation goals while also promoting rural development by alleviating poverty. However, the degree which these are met depends on implementation of programs, desirability and accessibility programs targeting communities. Understanding factors motivating or dissuading PES is vital su...

Eliciting truthful responses from self interested agents is an important problem in game theory and microeconomics and it is studied under mechanism design or implementation theory Truthful mechanisms have received considerable interest within computer science recently for designing protocols for Internet based applications which typically involve cooperation of multiple self interested agents ...