An application idea and a problem

[jamescarlyle <jamescarlyle at t...>]

--- In rdfweb-dev at yahoogroups.com, "Bill Kearney" <wkearney99 at h...> 
wrote:
> Edd's got an article that discusses some of this:
> http://usefulinc.com/foaf/encryptingFoafFiles
> 
Bill,

Thanks. Should have done a better search for prior work :(

> My only comment is that transitive trusts are a real pain to 
manage. Too often
> the participants misunderstand what they've let out to trust and 
what they've
> been trusted to share.

This may be very true - I don't have any direct experience. 
Transitive trusts have two big advantages, which I was hoping to 
utilise. Because trust between parties is somewhat inferred rather 
than purely stated explicitly, the volume of trust statements can be 
reduced. And connections can be suggested between two people who 
don't already have a trust relationship in place.

Of course for different types of information, different trust 
assurances will need to apply.

> What is interesting, however, is the idea of using Foaf structures 
as
> whitelisting aids. To have a mail transport start understanding 
how to
> correlate frequencies of mail in/outbound with presense in foaf 
groups
starts to
> look rather interesting. As in, I get mail from you, but you're 
not on my
> whitelist. A foaf traversal of "nearby" groups shows you're in the 
foaf
of
> someone else with which I frequently exchange mail. It might be
reasonable to
> assume that since the person with which I'm already 
convering 'trusts you
> enough' to list you in their foaf it might be ok to let your mail 
get
through.
> Sort of a decentralized six degrees of separation on mail handling.

DanBri has a page on FOAF whitelisting at
http://www.w3.org/2001/12/rubyrdf/util/foafwhite/intro.html, but I 
think that the intent was only to cover simple aggregation of email 
hashes, not to look at the number of degrees of separation.

James