Trust Management in Online Social Networks

Introduction

Online Social Networks have attracted a huge number of users from around the world which has become a part of their routine lifestyle. OSNs like Facebook, LinkdedIn, Instagram. Twitter, Google+ and Whatsapp are the most popular one among many others. The main purpose of OSN is to communicate or share information, opinions, documents, photos, videos, connecting with friends and family and for business purpose. There are also issues in the OSNs related to the security and privacy leading to untrustworthiness among users (Mahinderjit and Yi, 2016)¹. Moreover, privacy is one of the factors which leads to untrustworthiness in the OSN environment.

Goals and Objectives of the Research:

The main objective of the research is to evaluate the benefits of implying a multi – faceted model of trust management which specialises and can be personalised based on the requirements of the all the OSN users.

The milestones required for this Research are as follows:

      Research on the current trust models employed or available in the OSNs and then identify the issues or challenges in trust management.

      Conduct an online survey on the OSN users’ experiences and expectations and make relevant analysis to determine the need for developing or implementing a new innovative trust management model.

      Provide a brief review on how Mini OSN-0.1 application can enhance the experience of OSN users which uses a multi – faceted model of trust management that can be personalised and specialised by the user’s requirements.

Research problem(s) and/or research question(s)

The growth and popularity of OSNs has given rise to a new world where more than a billion people from around the world are connected together to share everything possible for better connectivity. With this growth users are also confronted with the trust issues in the OSNs. OSN users in the past have often got into trouble that center around the proper use of such networks and their trust issues which made a lot of headlines. At present, trust management in OSNs are mostly limited to simple personalised access control models which also use a one size fits all the user’s approach (Hamid, 2016)². In such models’ trust is mostly expressed with the variance of user’s activities but trust must be personalised by users which is again very difficult as to personalise such big number of users manually. Although this variance is seen vividly but it is overlooked by most OSNs (Noorian and Ulieru, 2010)³. This research mainly focuses to see the feasibility of the multi – faceted model of trust to satisfy the OSN Users according to their needs. Therefore, the questions for this research is that What are the challenges or issues faced by the OSN users in terms of trust management, whether a Multi – Faceted trust management model is relevant for the current issues of the OSN users, Will the MiniOSN-0.1 application consolidate with the model which can personalise and specialise.

Significance and benefits

One of the benefits of this research is that it provides solution based on the current issues of the trust management in OSNs. It allows OSN users better privacy settings based on their needs which is set by them by rating the trust attributes.

It also provides an application named MiniOSN-0.1 in order to show the relevance of the Multi – Faceted model of trust management in the OSN environment.

Research methodology

      In this research we need to study multiple journals, case studies and the past researches on the trust management of Online Social Networks to learn and know the current issues faced by the OSN users.

      We also plan to conduct an online survey on the OSN users to define the problem faced by them while using the OSN in terms of trust.

      We are also determined to analyse the findings to evaluate user behaviour and learn the shortcomings of the current trust management models in OSNs.

      Next to solve these shortcomings in the OSNs we plan to provide a solution to that by using a multi – faceted trust management model.

      Finally, to show the applicability of the model we also propose a Mini OSN-0.1 application which can personalise and specialise using ratings on the attributes.

Expected outcomes

      With the survey done for this research a huge number of valuable findings are expected out of this research which can be used to manage the OSN users’ needs and expectations.

      Further a blueprint of the MiniOSN-0.1 application is expected which will use the Multi – Faceted model of trust management using personalisation and specialisation features on the trust attributes.

      This Research also evaluates the need for a set of 10 most relevant attributes to define trust rating by the OSN users.

References

1. Mahinderjit, M. and Yi, T. (2016). Hybrid Multi-faceted Computational Trust Model for Online Social Network (OSN). International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 7(6).
2. Hamid, S. (2016). Computational models of trust and reputation in online social networks.
3. Noorian, Z. and Ulieru, M. (2010). The State of the Art in Trust and Reputation Systems: A Framework for Comparison. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 5(2).