Reputation in Privacy Enhancing Technologies
Abstract
Reputation is the linchpin of a dynamic and pseudonymous future. In a networked world in which individuals interact via anonymous re-mailers, and where the online services they use are themselves provided by an ever-changing pool of semi-anonymous users, the distinction between pseudonym and identity blurs. In this world, reputation is one of the few tools that can still provide trust -- trust among the users of distributed services, and even the trust necessary to maintain reliability and accountability of these services. In its most general form, reputation is memory about past performance. This memory can be localized and idiosyncratic, as in the case of users who remember which servers have worked well in the past; centralized and shared, as in the case of an auction site that tracks customer satisfaction of various vendors; distributed and shared, as in the case of servers that vote one another into different reliability categories; or even implicit within the structure of the system itself, as in the case of systems that embody trust as microcurrency that reliable systems tend to accumulate. While reputation might superficially seem inimical to privacy concerns, systems with explicit reputation can actually enable privacy by controlling the flow of information about pseudonymous individuals, and reducing the demand for out-of-line information exposure. As with security, it is tempting but incorrect to think that reputation is a simple matter of bolting an extra service to the side of an existing system. This point is illustrated by two reputation systems that have been designed for use in re-mailer networks.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA462241
Entities
People
- Nick Mathewson
- Paul Syverson
- Roger Dingledine
Organizations
- United States Naval Research Laboratory