A novel proximity based trust model for opportunistic networks

Trust should be earned. This is a famous quote that we use everyday implicitly or explicitly. Trust often is an inherent characteristic of our daily life, but in the digital community and between devices how can we represent trust? Since our mobile and digital devices became our confidants, we cannot share the information embedded in these devices with other devices without establishing trust. Hence, in this research a proximity based trust model based on Homophily principle is proposed. Earlier social studies have shown that people tend to have similarities with others in close proximity. In such clustered communities of interest people tend to communicate, socialize and potentially trust each other. In this paper, a novel proximity based trust model is built taking into consideration different aspects like cooperation or unselfishness, honesty, similarity and Activity. © 2013 IEEE.