Digital arbitration for trusted communication

• Published in: Journal of trust management 2016-06, Vol.3 (1), p.1, Article 3
• Main Authors: Brownstein, Dan, Dolev, Shlomi, Gilboa, Niv, Hermoni, Ofer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agreements; Arbitration; Blacklisting; Coding and Information Theory; Collaboration; Communication; Computer Science; Data Structures and Information Theory; Internet; Peers; Privacy; Public Key Infrastructure; Reputations; Sanctions; Servers; Social networks; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Systems and Data Security; Trust
• ISSN: 2196-064X; 2196-064X
• DOI: 10.1186/s40493-016-0024-x

We introduce the notion of digital-arbitration which enables resolving disputes between servers and users with the aid of arbitrators . Arbitrators are semi-trusted entities in the social network that facilitate communication or business transactions. The communicating parties, users and servers, agree before a communication transaction on a set of arbitrators they trust (reputation systems may support their choice). Then, the arbitrators receive a resource, e.g., a deposit, and a terms-of-use agreement between participants such that the resource of a participant is returned if and only if the participant acts according to the agreement. We demonstrate the usage of arbitrators in the scope of conditional anonymity. A user interacts anonymously with a server as long as the terms for anonymous communication are honored. If a server identifies a violation of the terms, it proves to the arbitrators that a violation took place and the arbitrators publish the identity of the user.