Net Trust is a security mechanism built to inform human trust decisions as opposed to constraining technical actions. Net Trust is designed to undermine fraud and credential subversion that uses human engineering; also called pretexting. Net Trust has a fully functioning, tested and highly usable interface. It is human-centered. The design is based in both human risk behaviors in the face of uncertainty and human trust behaviors.

The goal of Net Trust is to share information under a pseudonym, such that after an initial out-of-band introduction a person can be sure that they are sharing with the same entity over time. The goal is to leverage social trust for online trust, not to use technological mechanisms to create new forms of trust.

As of project creation, Nov 2006, there was a functioning demo with a back-end that was for demonstration purposes only. Any information entered into the database will be deleted upon server restart. The server was not in production mode; certainly you can use your own.

As of Nov 2007 there was a fully functional server. The code could be downloaded and used. The description of the back end was submitted for publication.

As of Nov 2008 there was an ambient interface designed for ambient interaction with non-traditional and predominantly stationary users. For example, elders or children surfing online at home. That work was done in collaboration with the ETHOS project, which designs interactions with seniors who use computers. http://www.ethos.indiana.edu