Patent ID: 8655719

Claim:
A method, comprising computer hardware performing operations comprising: receiving a purchase objective from a customer; assigning to the purchase objective a respective customer session identifier that uniquely identifies the purchase objective; associating the customer session identifier with a privacy policy established by the customer; notifying a merchant of the purchase objective; receiving from the merchant one or more queries for personal information associated with the customer; validating ones of the received queries that are associated with the purchase objective; for each of the validated queries, retrieving the privacy policy based on the customer session identifier, retrieving information matching the query from personal data relating to the customer and comprising historical data relating to prior purchases by the customer from different merchants, subject to data access restrictions specified by the privacy policy established by the customer, wherein the retrieving comprises identifying merchant-specific data access restrictions associated with a merchant identifier identifying the merchant, and applying the identified data access restrictions to the information matching the validated ones of the queries, and transmitting the retrieved information to the merchant; receiving from the merchant an offer that satisfies the purchase objective; and presenting the offer to the customer.