A method, using trust software executing from a machine-readable medium on a computerized appliance operating as a trust authority, to assign to a person, a file, or an enterprise an indication of trustworthiness, includes steps of (a) assembling information concerning the person, file, or enterprise; (b) applying trust logic to the information assembled for individual ones of the persons, files or enterprises to assign a trust score; and (c) storing the score associated with at least an identity of the person, file or enterprise.