Patent ID: 8135621

Claim:
A system for supporting anonymous transactions in a network of clients, comprising: a profile memory operable to store a non-anonymous profile associated with a first client, the non-anonymous profile including identifying client data and non-identifying client data associated with the first client; a rules memory operable to store a business rule for identifying a first portion of the non-anonymous profile as having the identifying client data and a second portion of the non-anonymous profile as having the non-identifying client data, wherein the identifying client data includes data that is unique to a particular client and wherein the non-identifying data includes data that is not unique to any particular client; a processor communicatively coupled to the rules memory, the profile memory, a database interface, and an instruction memory, the instruction memory including instructions, executable by the processor, to: generate an anonymous profile associated with the first client based on the business rule such that the anonymous profile includes at least a portion of the non-identifying client data in the non-anonymous profile but none of the identifying client data in the non-anonymous profile; monitor changes to the non-anonymous profile; determine whether any of the changes necessitate changes to the anonymous profile; make any needed changes in the anonymous profile to maintain the anonymous profile in synchronization with the non-anonymous profile; facilitate completion of a transaction involving the first client using both the anonymous profile and the non-anonymous profile; receive a request from the first client to engage in an anonymous transaction with a second client for a product, and provide the second client at least partial access to the anonymous profile but not to the non-anonymous profile associated with the first client; and identify, based on the anonymous profile, an order format and a communications protocol supported by the first client, and convert a first order for a product from the second client to a second order having the order format and the communications protocol; the database interface operable to receive the first order from the second client and access the anonymous profile associated with the first client; and a network interface operable to communicate the second order to the first client.