Context-aware trustworthiness evaluation with indirect knowledge

Commonly, when a Trustor evaluates a Trustee’s trustworthiness, it is assumed that the evaluation is based on information directly available to the Trustor. This can concern for example the reputation and recommendations characterizing the Trustee. In cases of context-aware trust, this is further restricted by concentrating mainly on information in a similar enough context as is effective at trust evaluation time. However, this information is not necessarily available to the Trustor. Surprisingly, in such scenarios the literature suggests either to wait for someone else to collect the needed experience, or to trust blindly. In this paper, we discuss solutions that help the Trustor to conduct its evaluation even if direct knowledge about the Trustee is lacking.We approach this by allowing the Trustor to make use of networks connecting the Trustor and the Trustee, as well as the context information characterizing the entities appearing in these networks.