On Shopping Incognito

The increasing popularity and importance of electronic com mercemakes very apparent the issue of privacyand anonymity for electronic consumers Technologies are already in exis tence that o er some degree of electronic privacy e g elec tronic digital cash However the mere fact that electronic commerce is conducted over existing network infrastructure such as the global Internet runs counter to the privacy of the consumer This is due mainly to the end to end nature of application protocols that are used as vehicles for electronic commerce World WideWeb WWW ElectronicMail File Transfer Protocols and others In this paper we discuss the issue of consumer anonymity and propose some solutions for the activities that typically surround electronic payment pre purchase browsing and merchandise delivery