Privacy-preserving identity transactions online : the use case of brokered identity federations

Abstract

Disinformation campaigns, created by fake accounts on online community platforms, have grown into one of the biggest threats against democracy, freedom and user perception of the truth. This thesis argues that mitigating this abuse and establishing trust online does not necessitate exposing identifying information about users on such platforms. Examples of identity mechanisms used by current platforms to curb this bad behaviour are included in the thesis to showcase the gaps in current schemes. There is a need to remodel the flow of identity transactions to cater to both anonymity and accountability considerations. To that extent, this thesis presents a use case of Brokered Identity Federations as a means to implement a one-time blind proof-of-existence that establishes a real-person is behind an account without revealing any excess identifiable information. The proposed architecture incorporates proof-of-existence by leveraging and re-purposing already existing enterprises, amongst whom identity interactions are divided, to maintain user anonymity while ensuring accountability in terms of limiting mass account creation. Lastly, the thesis discusses key considerations to take into account before the proposed architecture can be successfully realized.