The AlterEgo is a trustworthy digital representative of its user. It enforces the interests of the user with regard to trustworthiness assessment and privacy protection against other parties in the network. The areas in which the AlterEgo is to be used encompass any kind of (digital) functionalities and services that the user consumes.
In order for users to accept the AlterEgo device, a fundamental and well-founded trust in the AlterEgo has to be established.
Within the first funding phase, a substantial reflection of what is required to construct and use an AlterEgo is at the heart of the research efforts in D.4. This includes investigating:
- open hardware (and hardware-federation) that is resistant to manipulation,
- a middleware that is well-founded from a socio-technical perspective, in order to stimulate user acceptance,
- extension protocols that permit the continuing evolution of the AlterEgo as a system,
- a (universal) platform for trustworthiness assessment, and
- specific mechanisms for privacy protection and trustworthiness assessment, to be implemented on the AlterEgo device (for instance, those investigated in D.1 – D.3)
