Week Ten

This week we are looking at trust. There has been no in class session this week.   

1) What is meant by the following statements?

Trust is not associative (non-symmetric)

This means that trust is not necessarily the same on both sides of the transaction or any other situation. Say for a simple example, I trust my wife to remember to pick up a birthday card for my mum. This does not mean my wife would trust me to remember to pick one up for her mum. In business an example of this would be that a seller may trust that the buyer will hold up their end of the deal and transfer the money for a product or service but the buyer may not have the same amount of trust that the seller will deliver what they have promised.

Trust is not transitive

I think that what is meant by this statement is that trust will not be transferred from one party to the next just through association. For example if a manufacturer trusts their wholesaler it doesn't mean that they will automatically trust the retailer that the wholesaler on sells their product to.

Trust is always between exactly 2 parties.

this statement means that the trust in any transaction is between the two parties that the transaction is between. for example in a situation where a manufacturer sells to a wholesaler and then the wholesaler sells to a retailer, the retailer only has to trust the wholesaler to provide the goods. the same retailer may not even know the manufacturer, the trust for the manufacturer lies between them and the wholesaler.

Trust will involve either direct trust or recommended trust

recommended trust is where one party recommends trust of a third party to someone. for example if a manufacturer trusts their wholesaler they may recommend them to another manufacturer, assuming that this manufacturer trusts the person making the recommendation then they will most likely take on the trust recommended.

2a) Have a look at the following websites. What are some of the elements that have been incorporated to increase your trust in the sites? If there are also some aspects which decrease your level of trust describe them as well.

http://www.ebay.com.au/
http://www.anz.com.au/
http://www.thinkgeek.com/
http://www.paypal.com.au/

After looking at all of these sites here is a list of elements I think have been put in to increase trust.

• Contact us page
• Sign in/log in pages, registration.
• Customer support and help pages.
• Legal agreements, Product disclosure statements, user agreements, terms of use pages, privacy policy's, security statements.
• Safety advice pages.
•  Feed back forums.
• secure payment sites recognisable by the padlock symbol or the https as seen in the picture opposite.
• Give out phone numbers.
• Use pictures of people and families to evoke a feeling that other people use and run the site.

2b) Find a web site yourself that you think looks untrustworthy.

Here is a website that I think is untrustworthy, for a start look at the URL it is so long

http://lpau.zemgoogs.com/lp.aspx?LpID=329943&PartnerID=kintris&subid=10212015211915352111025&offer_id=52&aff_sub=RwQAADkXHgCiW50AAAAAAOjjJgAAAAAAAgAAAAYAAAAAAP8AAAADExBVMQAAAAAA9uUyAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB3cRIAAAAAAAIAAgAAAAAAVvvvOTMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=,eAEL9HPP8KzKT8.NSzaO1MstNs3xM7TQ88txqUqOt8x2L830d.VOS9fVBQAX.A1P&aff_sub2=&aff_sub3=

Another reason I think of this site as untrustworthy is because the picture below is a screen shot of the link to it from another site http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/ it has said this every time I have visited the host site. Any site that miss leads people like that, I would consider untrustworthy.