Patent ID: 7181431

Claim:
A method of providing a virtual shopping mall coupling subscribers with a plurality of providers in an interactive system, the method comprising the steps of: providing the plurality of subscribers with information relating to items provided by the plurality of providers; encrypting a purchase order to produce an encrypted operator purchase order and an encrypted provider purchase order that include at least a portion of information contained in the purchase order, the purchase order for at least one item provided by at least one of the plurality of providers, the at least one item in the purchase order selected by a subscriber in the plurality of subscribers, wherein encrypting the purchase order to produce the encrypted operator copy of the purchase order and the encrypted provider copy of the purchase order comprises encrypting the purchase order to form the encrypted operator purchase order differently from encrypting the purchase order to form the encrypted provider purchase order; transmitting the encrypted operator purchase order and encrypted provider purchase order to a central operator, the central operator coupling the subscribers with the plurality of providers; decrypting the encrypted operator purchase order to form a decrypted purchase order; analyzing the decrypted operator purchase order to determine a provider, among the plurality of providers, that provides the at least one item selected by the subscriber; and transmitting the encrypted provider purchase order to the provider that provides the at least one item selected by the subscriber by relaying the encrypted provider copy of the purchase order from the central operator to the provider that provides the at least one item selected by the subscriber without first decrypting the encrypted provider copy of the purchase order.