Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

Increasing Internet Users Trust in the Cloud Computing Era: The Role of Privacy

Abstract

Christos Kalloniatis

During the last decades Internet has been introduced in our lives providing a vast amount of e-services in various fields of our every day activity like banking, shopping, entertainment, communication, learning an so on that without doubt improve our life’s quality in various ways. The easiness of use along with the continuously increased number of users joining the online world every day has transformed the use of online services a mandatory daily activity rather than an optional interaction like it used to be in its the early stages. This tremendous development inspired many professionals and IT experts to invest in the creation of more innovative web services that will increasingly attract more users offering even more attractive ways to improve the quality of living both in the physical/real and online worlds. One of these recent innovations is the creation of cloud computing, a three layer architecture that offers various kinds of services that users enjoy. Users’ trust towards cloud computing is one of the greatest socio-technical issues today and one of the key factors that formulate users’ trust is the protection of their privacy. This paper moves towards this direction identifying the privacy characteristics that must be realized when designing services for cloud users.