A Framework to Provide Anonymity in Reputation Systems

Abstract

In ubiquitous networks, the multiple devices carried by an user may unintentionally expose information about her habits or preferences. This information leakage can compromise the users' right to privacy. A common approach to increase privacy is to hide the user real identity under a pseudonym. Unfortunately, pseudonyms may interfere with the reputation systems that are often used to assert the reliability of the information provided by the participants in the network. This paper presents a framework for combining anonymity with reputation and shows that it can be configured to provide a desired degree of balance between these two conflicting goals. The proposed solution leverages on well-known cryptographic techniques, such as public key infrastructure and blind signatures.

IncogniSense: An anonymity-preserving reputation framework for participatory sensing applications

“…IncogniSense shares the most similarities with [14,15], which rely on periodic pseudonyms and transfer of reputation between pseudonyms. As our work builds upon the RuP algorithm [14], we present a detailed comparison in Section 4.3.…”

“…As our work builds upon the RuP algorithm [14], we present a detailed comparison in Section 4.3. In short, RuP requires the clients to create n temporary pseudonyms for each valid pseudonym and relies on probabilistic proofs.…”

“…In comparison to RuP, IncogniSense is robust against reputation corruption and the clients generate only one pseudonym per period. The protocol presented in [15], which extends the ideas from [14], is based on the concept of k-anonymity [16]. They assume the existence of a third party server which forms groups of clients sharing the same reputation and distributes a signature key per group to sign the pseudonyms.…”

A mechanism based on reputation in P2P networks to counter malicious packet dropping

“…Ref. [5] proposes a reputation-based P2P network to achieve peers' anonymity by changing the pseudonym. However, it is implemented using an online TTP (Trusted Third Part).…”

EARep: A fully distributed exchange-based anonymity P2P reputation system

“…Another way to achieve anonymity is to change pseudonyms RuP [10] (reputation using pseudonyms) and DARep [11] (distributed anonymity reputation), which are the two representative schemes in this category aiming at achieving all the peers' anonymity in reputation systems by changing pseudonyms. However, the RuP system is implemented using an online TTP.…”