Risk Weighted Social Trust Index for Online Social Networks

Online social networks (OSN) are a great boon for connecting internet user communities for sharing ideas, important happenings and life events. At the same time, there is a negative perception among user community that OSN compromises privacy concerns in several ways. To address this concern, this paper proposes the concept of defining a cumulative trust index for OSNs called Risk Weighted Social Trust Index (RWSTI). The end goal of RWSTI is to provide a holistic measure on social media trustworthiness for users. RWSTI could be published by regulatory bodies or internet watchdog organizations to improve trust in OSN communities.