An Algorithm for Selecting Optimal Trust Path in Online Social Networks Using Particle Swarm Optimization

In this decade online social networks (OSNs) become very popular and it attracts millions of people. Everyday a set of the new users are joining on different social networking sites. Sometimes one user needs to communicate with a totally unknown user for several purposes. If two unknown participants wish to communicate with each other, the evaluation of their trustworthiness along a certain trust path between them within the social network is required. But trustworthiness is a subjective parameter and it depends on the role that the participants play within the network. One end user can measure the trustworthiness of its own single hops connections. But when they need to know the authenticity of a user who is not directly connected with them, then the requirement of multi-hop trust path arise. In a social network graph, multiple trust paths are possible [4] between two users. In this paper we have tried to describe an optimal trust path selection algorithm using Particle swarm intelligence technique; so that one end user can conclude the trustworthiness of another end user, even they are totally unknown to each other. We have tested our algorithm using some real-world datasets.