Rationale

The internet has over the past three decades become fundamental to the global economy. In a short space of time it has grown from an experimental research network and now underpins a range of new economic activities as well as activities and infrastructures that support our economy. The internet is making economic activity more efficient, faster and cheaper, and extending social interaction in unparalleled ways. Increasingly, the largest productivity gains for businesses come from using online networks in some form. As of today, more than a billion people worldwide use it on a regular basis, both at work and in their social lives. From entertainment to everyday duties including shopping, banking, all kinds of services are now available on the Internet, most of the time providing extended additional functionalities to traditional services.

Use of internet services very often requires end users to create a login and provide some levels of information on their profile. Internet services publishers generally request users to provide personal information – location, gender, age - in order to offer comprehensive customized services adapted to the individuals. Delivery services would require users to provide a shipment address and telephone numbers. Some services may request more intrusive or personal information such as the marital status, revenues or occupation. Online companies can also decide to store information related to the users’ behavior and usage of the services. Digging into usage information has become important over time to the services publishers, as it allows to improve services as well as provide intelligent services or advertizing campaigns adapted to the users profiles.

There unfortunately is a drawback to the sharing of personal information on the Internet. While shared personal information allowed users to benefit from customized services, unexpected internet threats started to be experienced by end users. A new parallel economy appeared on the web, making the most out of information publicly available. While some companies specialized in the collection of people’s personal information on the web in order to generate lists of email recipients, some other companies specialized in the shipment of spam emails, proposing to sell drugs or fraudulent services to whoever had left their personal information available on the web. While this economy grew bigger over time, some internet services publishers having collected large amounts of users’ personal information were tempted to sell their users contact details to marketing companies without the users’ knowledge or approval. Many other types of frauds or unexpected solicitations were experienced since then. There is a long list of internet fraud examples, ranging from identity theft, fake check scams, and phishing, to email spam or unauthorized use of personal data. While some of these frauds originated from the indulgence of internet users sharing their personal information on the web, others have been due to a lack of ethics from companies or individuals providing web services.

Research questions

In this context, trust in Internet services is developing into a vitally important topic as the Internet becomes increasingly ubiquitous within society. Many Internet users have faced situations where they hesitated to register to or provide information to a website due to the potential risks. Since there is no legal obligation for the service providers to give visibility on their internal procedures, there always remains a possibility to see our personal information shared by the company or individual employees with marketing companies or fraudulent organizations without our agreement. Even in the case where the service providers adopted business ethics that refrain them from exploiting others personal data, security breaches on their hardware or software infrastructure may open the possibility for hackers to break into their systems and steal information.

Initiatives were launched in order to provide solutions to the issues potentially experienced by end users, covering three dimensions of Trust: security, identity and privacy. Third party companies are today delivering seals that cover these main areas of website verification. Security seals, which are the most popular type of site verification, would confirm that the technical infrastructure and software of the service provider are protected against vulnerabilities or attacks. Identity seals verify that the Businesses advertised on web sites really are who they say they are, by checking business details made available. Finally, privacy seals are provided by a small range of third party companies who verify that there are certain statements in the companies’ privacy policy that protect their customers.

Although many discussions of trust as well as proposed solutions in this environment focus on issues like security or technical reliability, few address the problem of trust in the internet services, due to a lack of visibility on the service providers’ procedures, privacy policy, ethics, and the absence of defined and verified best practices. Privacy seals delivered by third party companies only certify some adherence to privacy policies but no real control by the users of what they want to make visible, to whom or for which duration – most of the websites don’t offer any capability to delete user accounts as well as associated usage data- . While internet users fear the risk of seeing their personal information used for unwanted means anytime they register or provide personal information on a new site, little effort has been made to encourage service providers to adhere to recognized standards that would guarantee more respect of the user’s rights, thus improve overall trust into internet services.


Thesis organization

The analysis of current solutions sheds some light on the strong need for theoretical and empirical research on trust within the field of Internet service delivery. As an initial step, the present study develops a model of trust in internet services by integrating the research on trust from the behavioral and social sciences with the research on Internet usage and uncertainties. The research effort positions trust as a key mediating variable between Internet services and Internet usage, with important consequences for both the service providers and consumers of Internet services. Solutions to improve mutual trust on the web are then explored by consolidating information from authoritative sources. This study closes by defining a possible service offering as well as outlining important directions for future research on trust in Internet services.