Cyber Trust in the Norwegian Online Flea Market: An Ethnographic Study on Fraud

Abstract

This work-in-progress paper reports an ethnographic study on how cyber trust could be designed to prevent online fraud. A yearlong ethnographic study was conducted with a group of victims who were frauded in online shopping. I discuss how-to re-build cyber trust by linking different interests of actors, such as sellers, the police, the consumer council, the person registers authority, the national collection agency, and the classified advertisements website provider, towards an anticipated safety for online shopping. Through the actornetwork theory, the paper unpacks the mechanism of payment method of classified advertisements website which caused the cyber trust to be unsuccessful. Reasons behind it is the interests of different actors are not probably translated which caused the safety-vulnerability and gave chances to the scammer. I assert that a better understanding of the social aspect of technology use will provide fruitful insights on societal changes in information society for better living.