Patent ID: 8386333

Claim:
A method for conducting anonymous shopping transactions on a network, comprising: providing, by an information broker computer, a client computer with an anonymous shopping toolbar to execute in a browser on the client computer; receiving, at the information broker computer, an anonymous credit card request associated with an on-line transaction from the client computer via the anonymous shopping toolbar, wherein the information broker computer receives the anonymous credit card request over a network; creating, at the information broker computer, a unique single-use anonymous credit card number in response to the anonymous credit card request, wherein the unique single-use anonymous credit card number has an expiration date corresponding to a month and a year in which the anonymous credit card number is created; linking the anonymous credit card number generated in response to the anonymous credit card request to a real credit card account associated with the client computer; and sending the anonymous credit card number from the information broker computer to the client computer, wherein the anonymous shopping toolbar provided to the client computer performs an auto-form fill-in procedure to automatically insert the anonymous credit card number into a transaction form associated with a merchant and automatically transmit the auto-filled transaction form to the merchant to complete the on-line transaction.