Enhancing Privacy and Trust in Electronic Communities

Bernardo A. Huberman, Matt Franklin and Tad Hogg

@INPROCEEDINGS {,
AUTHOR = "Bernardo A. Huberman, Matt Franklin and Tad Hogg",
TITLE = "Enhancing Privacy and Trust in Electronic Communities",
BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (EC99)",
PAGES = "78-86",
PUBLISHER = "ACM Press",
ADDRESS = "NY",
YEAR = "1999"}

Abstract

A major impediment to using recommendation systems and collective knowledge for electronic commerce is the reluctance of individuals to reveal preferences in order to find groups of people that share them. An equally important barrier to fluid electronic commerce is the lack of agreed upon trusted third parties. We propose new non-third party mechanisms to overcome these barriers. Our solutions facilitate finding shared preferences, discovering communities with shared values, removing disincentives posed by liabilities, and negotiating on behalf of a group. We adapt known techniques from the cryptographic literature to enable these new capabilities.

Paper (pdf)