This session was on Trust.  What’s the basis for trusting someone?  The tried and true motto is “past behaviour predicts future behaviour” (Canadian spelling).  So, look at what someone has done in the past, and go by that.

We teach our kids to “never trust a stranger,” unless that stranger has a uniform like a nurse or fireman, right?

But of course as adults life is not that simple, and so we often rely on “intuition” (I just had a good feeling about that hitchhiker…)  Or we trust friends of friends, referrals, “introductions,” etc. And of course we trust some brands / products / institutions / certificates / documents / IDs…

In the digital world, we have new challenges and new tools:

Analysis / regression analysis / identity theft / fake documents / stolen information

But intuition can fail you - how can you have intuition about an Avatar?  How many people have put up false profiles, one million, ten million…?

We know that we can’t trust 99% of the emails that we get.  When I signed up for my PayPal account (one of the speakers at Defrag is the CEO) I got the confirmation email - and it was not them!  I had one friend ask me to always embed items within my emails - they would never click on an attachment, she wrote.

As a banker, I remember when the little SSL “lock” icon came out to show that a site was safe enough for yes, personal financial information - until they just started pasting the icon on fake websites -carbon copies of actual bank websites.

“Trust but verify” seems to have become “Don’t trust, there really is no way to verify.”

How about you?  How do you know who to trust on line?  Anyone? Ever get burned?

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