TAPESTRY: Trust, Authentication and Privacy over a DeCentralised Social Registry

TAPESTRY investigates and demonstrates new ways to enable people, businesses and services to make better decisions about who they should trust online, by exploiting the ‘tapestry’ of multimodal signals woven by everyday digital interaction.

Early-phase research outcomes include social science work at Dundee exploring user attitudes and behaviours around trust, to inform the design of the prototype platform; and visual design at Northumbria exploring ways to communicate an impression of the provenance that an online identity holds. The Surrey team has developed machine-learning algorithms that derive provenance information from longitudinal social media streams, encrypt and store its ‘essence’ as trust evidence in a blockchain application, and generate a ‘provenance visualisation’ in real time. The prototype technology has been trialed at workshops in Newcastle and Surrey to evaluate its acceptability and efficacy in helping people decide on the legitimacy of an online identity.

Supplementary research has concerned developing and trialing design workshop approaches towards promoting understanding amongst multidisciplinary research teams working together on ‘opaque’ technologies.

The wider team has presented insights into trust online and accounts of the technology to several government departments.