User centric commerce

Abstract

Online merchants observe the behavior of their customers and collect personal information. This gives rise to the problem being solved by the egosafe user centric commerce framework. The problem is that merchants use this collected information abusively as part of their marketing strategies. Egosafe's objective is to re-instate users with control over their personal information. Users are allowed to reap online benefits without the invasion of their privacy. The notion of a Personal Information Account is crucial. In order to exhibit different roles while browsing the Internet, users create different accounts hosting subsets of their personal identifiable information. Each account is controlled by a set of user-defined privacy and usage rules, which should be adhered to by merchants. All information releases can be recorded using subscriptions. These enable users with post-release control at egosafe compliant merchants. This mechanism allows users to revoke and synchronise information, and to modify usage and privacy rules of a particular subscription. A user and a recipient merchant can electronically sign a subscription. A set of services is provided against the users' information accounts. Basic services such as advanced form filling, anonymous browsing and click stream control are offered. The notion of aliases is employed, where possible, to allow users with post-release control at all merchant sites, including non-egosafe compliant sites. Aliases are pointers to personal information instances. Merchants are supplied with these surrogates instead of real information. An email alias is given to each merchant. This is the basis of egosafe's foolproof solution to unsolicited email (spam). Prepaid accounts can be maintained by users so as to be issued with a credit card alias at a merchant checkout. Such aliases address the concern of credit card theft, which is hindering several potential customers from participating in online commerce