An Approach for Determining Trustworthiness of Individuals in a Web-Based Social Network

The role of Web-based social networks is increasing in our personal as well as professional life. We come across persons of varied natures, personalities, attitudes, beliefs, feelings, etc. A combined effect of extent of various personality attributes of a person creates an impression in one’s mind about the trustworthiness of that person. The level of trust that one assumes about the other determines future course of action with that person. This paper discusses the need and importance of trust when one interacts with others in a Web-based social network. Trusting an untrustworthy may pose dangerous consequences. It is not easy to precisely and accurately measure trustworthiness of persons interacting within a Web-based social network. The interaction is virtual rather than face-to-face. Not only individuals but even groups can act maliciously and adversely affect other individuals, groups or communities. Hence, it is imperative to have a trust determination technique which enables users to determine trustworthiness of others. The approach presented in this paper makes use of fuzzy logic to handle imprecise and uncertain information and determines trustworthiness by taking into consideration various personality attributes of individuals like their attitude, behavior, beliefs, honesty, responsibility. Final trustworthiness is evaluated by considering not only the individual’s perception but also taking feedback from independent third party and asking recommendations from peers. This makes determination of trust more accurate and reliable. The proposed approach has been simulated and validated using synthetic data set, and results show that it is flexible, is robust and can be adopted for the use in a Web-based social network for determining trustworthiness of participating peers, groups or communities.