Digital Trust
By: Divya Ashish Mohanty
Where are you headed for tonight’s date? Where do you usually hide your spare keys? When will you sleep tonight? What are you planning to cook for tomorrow’s breakfast? What will you be wearing to your not so friendly cousin’s wedding? Some of the questions whose answers you might not know yourself could be known to Mark Zuckerberg or Sundar Pichai. The two major league players in the industry of metaverse and technology. End-to-end encryption, multiple privacy policies of different software giants, various restrictions and illegal data storing systems have led numerous people to question the trust that is shared for such companies. But is it really like that? Are they really trying to collect your information? There have been many instances in movies where the character says that the government is “watching” us and keeping “tabs” on us. Is that so, or are we worrying for pennies?
In 2008 there was a scandal concerning the data of consumers being harvested by the organisation blamed at the time. Information about the data misuse was disclosed by Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee, in interviews with The Guardian and The New York Times. In response to that the multimillion dollar giant apologised for their role in data harvesting and its CEO testified in front of congress. The company was none other than Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. If such cases have been dealt with before regardless of the size of company or value of the cases being handled, they definitely are a solid evidence that such nuisances are taking place and so finely that we are unable to remove ourselves from the equation.
In 2016 WhatsApp initiated end-to-end encryption. This enabled users to relax and text their loved ones without the bother of someone else reading their messages. Just imagine yourselves comfortably sitting back and texting your loved one about how your day went and how you can’t wait to meet them soon. But then you realise your best friend has been reading the entire conversation! This is not something you want to share with your best friend. Now picture this, billions of users all around the world, trillions of data and that data is being read by hundreds of people managing it. Hmm not a good picture to imagine.
The goal of ‘Digital Trust’ is not to make people fear technology and to stop using them completely but to make the creators of such interfaces aware that people too can question the authenticity of the applications and its impact on their lives.
The digital trust framework defines shared goals or values that inform the concept of digital trust including;
- Security and reliability
- Accountability and oversight
- Inclusive, ethical and responsible use
The framework also defines dimensions against which the trustworthiness of digital technologies can be operationalized and evaluated;
- Cybersecurity
- Safety
- Transparency
- Interoperability
- Auditability
- Redressability
- Fairness
- Privacy
Green on all of the aforementioned boxes means that an application is reliable and is probably not harvesting your data or at least collecting your data with malicious intention. Be safe and be aware.
