Making trusted attribute assertions online with the publish trust framework

Abstract

Users are able to arbitrarily make assertions about themselves online. In many spaces, it is valuable to both the users and information consumers that those statements can be validated and trusted. In this paper, we present the Publish Trust Framework. This leverages Semantic Web technologies to add provenance to the attributes a person wants to assert about themselves. That connects the statements back to their sources which are rated according to their trustworthiness. We discuss the structure of the framework, describe a pilot deployment, and present future directions for this research.