Can I believe you?: Establishing Trust in Computer Mediated Introductions

Abstract

The problem of trust is one of the more prominent security issue in online communications. This paper critically analyses and discusses the issue of trust in computer mediated introduction (CMI) where individuals are introduced for the purpose of interacting offline. One of the most popular forms of CMI today is online dating. We evalu- ate and compare the attempts made to solve the problem of trust in various computer mediated communications. We further specifi- cally analyze three online dating platforms, Match.com, Plenty of Fish, and Tinder, and compare how they attempt to establish trust between potential matches. We find that existing mechanisms are not sufficient to establish meaningful trust in online dating. While we propose some potential alternative mechanisms for establishing trust in CMIs, the key contribution of this work is to identify the security challenges that arise in computer mediated introductions as a previously unrecognized class of security problems.

Publication
In New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW).
Date
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