Patent ID: 7246150

Claim:
A computer communications system for providing advice consumers with targeted information without requiring the disclosure of private profile data, the computer system comprising: at least one advice site configured to: receive information from at least one content provider, said information including profile information describing advice consumers for whom said information is targeted; make said information available to at least one reader running on a client advice consumer computer; wherein the at least one reader can access a user profile of the client advice consumer computer on which it is running; wherein the at least one reader can access the included profile information describing advice consumers for whom said received information is targeted; receive at least one request from at least one reader for information received from at least one content provider, responsive to a determination that the included profile information describing advice consumers for whom said received information is targeted matches the user profile of the client advice consumer computer on which the at least one reader is running; provide said received information to at least one client advice consumer computer only in response to receiving said at least one request from at least one reader; wherein said at least one content provider and said at least one advice site cannot access any user profile of any client advice consumer computer, and wherein at least one user profile of at least one client advice consumer computer comprises at least some private data.