Building trust in e-commerce

To increase confidence in commercial transactions over the Web where the transacting parties are invisible to each other, we need not just new protocols but also new transaction processes. One solution is to enlist a third party, referred to here as a trust service provider (TSP), to act as an Internet-based intermediary that assumes responsibility for a smooth transaction. The TSP is known and trusted by both customer and merchant and makes purchases on behalf of the one and conveys the goods on behalf of the other. The article describes a proposal for a trust Web model based on a distributed search algorithm and a network of trusted intermediaries that can establish a trusted channel through which terminal transacting parties deal virtually directly and risk-free with each other. The author has developed a CORBA-based implementation of the trust-path building algorithm and is currently testing its performance. The actual version of the system can be found at: http://faculty.uaeu.ac.ae/~atif/research/ecommerce/ec.html