A Framework Balancing Privacy and Cooperation Incentives in User-Centric Networks

User-centricity subsumes new models of Internet connectivity and resource sharing, which are based on collaborative behaviors asking for cooperation strategies. On one hand, typical incentives stimulating cooperation, based, e.g., on trust and remuneration, require some level of information disclosure that can be used to outline the user behavior. On the other hand, disclosing such information can be considered as a privacy breach keeping the users from being involved in certain interactions. In this paper, we present a flexible privacy-preserving mechanism trading privacy for trust-based and cost-based incentives. Firstly, the proposed mechanism is validated theoretically through model checking based analysis. Secondly, implementation issues are discussed with respect to the design of ad-hoc solutions based on a centralized reputation system and a distributed trust system