The Trust Foundation Understanding trust issues in the digital era.

In response to the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003, Google made a change to its landing page by adding a “privacy” link for its visitors. The California Privacy Protection Act states that a commercial website that collects personal information must link to a privacy policy from the websites homepage.

Dixie and Steven K Randock Sr., after three years of investigation, were finally caught and charged for producing degrees from made up universities. For a couple thousand dollars, this couple handed out seemingly-legitimate undergrad and masters degrees that required very little or no education. The Randcocks did not just produce the diplomas, but took steps to make sure the degrees looked as credible as possible. For example, they staffed an office of people who would pick up the phone when employers would call to verify the degrees. They also produced some fake degrees from legitimate universities; doing so became much easier as Universities began to offer online classes and degrees.

“Monroe was one of more than 120 fictitious universities operated by Dixie and Steven K. Randock Sr., a couple from Colbert, Wash., who sold diplomas for a price, according to a three-year federal investigation that ended in guilty pleas from the Randocks to mail and wire fraud. The inquiry into their diploma mill, which operated most often as St. Regis University, provides the most up-to-date portrait of how diploma factories can harness the rapidly evolving power of the Internet to expand their reach.”

[This is another highlight from our Knowledge@Wharton series focusing on trust issues.]

"...trust harmed by untrustworthy behavior can be effectively restored when individuals observe a consistent series of trustworthy actions...making a promise to change behavior can help speed up the trust recovery process."

Hope our U.S. readers had a good Thanksgiving holiday!

The Financial Times published an article this weekend, "Banks want Treasury to pay for ID theft", which points out some events that can play out when government created trust systems fail to work.

After years working on identity and its protection, I've concluded that our identity infrastructure is fundamentally broken--and the Web is what ultimately broke it. -- Steven Gal

There's an interesting opinion article on CNET News written by Steven Gal, CEO of ProQuo, a start-up that allows users to choose which paper junk mail to stop receiving from different sources.

Do you remember when James Frey, author of the supposed non-fiction book, A Million Little Pieces, was publicly chastised in front of millions of viewers by television host Oprah Winfrey for fabricating details of his book and misrepresenting the truth?

Is seeing believing (and trusting)?

"The extent to which I do or do not trust you is a function not only of how trusting a person I am and what I know about you, but also a function of irrelevant events that have influenced my emotional state. For example, if I hit a parked car, argued with my spouse, learned that I have to pay a large repair bill (or won an award, had a paper accepted, or saw my stock account grow) beforehand, I would trust you less (or more). The main idea...is that emotions which are irrelevant to the judgment task nevertheless influence trust judgments in predictable ways."

"Should people who have done little or no business together trust one another? "

When people blog about issues of trust online, the dialogue and debate often turns into an exchange of personal opinion rather than an objective analysis of solid facts. This post is the first in a series of posts on exciting findings about trust identified via actual trust research conducted at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.