DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A DECISION SYSTEM FOR CHATBOT APPLICATIONS

ABSTRACT

Sharing of information should be done effectively and securely to protect Personal Identifiable Information of users. Using chatbot, a computer application to share information portend a likelihood of identity theft if not properly secured. In communicating with chatbots, the user’ information is held in the database of the chatbot application. The availability of user information on this application may give opportunity to attackers to hijack personal user information to perpetrate crime. Unfortunately, current chatbot applications do not have a mechanism to delete or remove personal identifiable information of users. Some chatbots accept users personal identifiable information with no recourse to the user on what happens after the chat session. To avoid a third party to trade, sell or hack the data, this research designed a decision system to be added to the chatbot application that will enable the user to consciously decide on how their personal identifiable information should be treated or kept. The chatbot was implemented in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), using PHP and MySQL for standard web development. Also, a PHP server was installed for the system to relate properly with the database server in fetching and storing the data. The system was tested using likelihoods that may lead to the success of the program. This was done repeatedly with different test data. The new system provide for users’ consent on whether their personal information be left on the chatbot app or be removed completely.