Federation and attestation of online reputations

• US 20070179834A1
• Filed: 02/01/2006
• Published: 08/02/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: CPTN Holdings LLC
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Carter, Stephen, Burch, Lloyd
• Application Number:
  US11/345,163
• Publication Number:
  US 20070179834A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/10
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data

Abstract

Techniques for federating and for attesting to online reputations are provided. A variety of reputation sources supply portions of reputation information about a principal. The portions are aggregated and optionally weighted to form a summary of reputation information. The summary is then represented as an attestation and optionally signed by the service providing the attestation.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

receiving a request for advice on a reputation of a principal;

acquiring reputation information on the principal;

assembling an attestation summarizing the reputation information; and

supplying the attestation to the requestor.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving further includes identifying the requestor as at least one of the principal and a different principal not associated with the principal for which the attestation is supplied.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein acquiring further includes limiting the summary of the reputation information to a category or to a related-category that is associated with or related to a subject of the request.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein acquiring further includes soliciting advice from a variety of external reputation-enabled services to acquire the reputation information.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein assembling further includes representing the attestation as a Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) compliant statement.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein supplying further includes digitally signing the attestation.

7. The method of claim 1 further comprising, authenticating the requestor before processing the request.

8. A method, comprising:

maintaining weights for a plurality of reputation categories associated with a principal;

monitoring actions of the principal with respect to each of the reputation categories; and

re-calculating the weights when thresholds are identified in response to the actions.

9. The method of claim 8 further comprising, representing each of the weights on an independent scale that is relevant to its corresponding reputation category.

10. The method of claim 8 further comprising, representing each of the weights on a scale that is relevant to the plurality of reputation categories as a whole.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein monitoring further includes associating the actions within particular semantic spaces, wherein each particular semantic space is associated or related to one or more of the reputation categories.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein monitoring further includes checkpoint the monitoring of actions at policy-driven intervals to determine if the thresholds are reached or being approached.

13. The method of claim 8 further comprising, notifying a reputation service of revised reputation information for the principal after re-calculating the weights.

14. A method, comprising:

identifying a plurality of reputation sources for a principal;

soliciting each reputation source for a portion of reputation information with respect to the principal; and

aggregating each portion of reputation information into a federated reputation for the principal.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein aggregating further includes categorizing each portion within the federated reputation.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising, weighting or scoring each portion within the federated reputation.

17. The method of claim 15 further comprising, presenting the federating reputation to a semantic reputation weighting and monitoring service for purposes of dynamically managing and adjusting weights associated with each portion of the federated reputation in response to semantic actions of the principal.

18. The method of claim 14 further comprising weighting each portion within the federation reputation at least in part based on separate reputations associated with the reputation sources that supplied the portions of the reputation information.

19. The method of claim 14 further comprising:

representing the federated reputation as a reputation attestation;

digitally signing the reputation attestation; and

supplying the signed reputation attestation to an authorized requester.

20. A system, comprising:

a plurality of reputation sources; and

a reputation attestation service, wherein the reputation attestation service is to consult each of the plurality of reputation services for portions of reputation information related to a principal, and wherein the reputation attestation service is to assemble a reputation attestation for the principal in response to a summary of the portions of reputation information.

21. The system of claim 20 further comprising, a semantic weighting and monitoring service to interact with the reputation attestation service and to supply weights for the portions of the reputation information.

22. The system of claim 21, wherein the semantic weighting and monitoring service is to further adjust the weights in response to semantic actions of the principal.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein the reputation attestation service is to weight the portions in response to separate reputations associated with each of the plurality of reputation sources.

24. The system of claim 20, wherein the reputation attestation service is to digitally sign the reputation attestation.

25. The system of claim 20 further comprising, a reputation federation service to provide the summary of the portions to the reputation attestation service and to interact directly with the plurality of reputation sources on behalf of the reputation attestation service.

26. The system of claim 20, wherein the reputation attestation service associates each portion with a category and assigns a value for that category within the summary.