Patent ID: 7409548

Claim:
A method for maintaining confidentiality of personal information during E-commerce transactions comprising the steps of: compiling a profile of personal information within an electronic depository for at least a first party to an E-commerce transaction; providing said first party a unique transaction identifier (TID) linked to said profile for use during said E-commerce transaction; and in response to said first party providing said TID to a second party to said E-commerce transaction, completing said transaction utilizing said electronic depository without said second party receiving at least a portion of said personal information of said first party; and wherein, when said transaction requires a transfer of an item from the second party to the first party, said completing step includes: assigning a security routing identifier (SRID) for utilization by said second party to identify a shipment of said item by a shipping service affiliated with said electronic depository, wherein the shipping service is independent of said second party and is utilized to complete said transfer of said item to an address of said first party, and wherein said SRID is initially provided to the second party, who forwards the item along with said SRID and said TID to the depository, wherein the second party does not receive a shipping address of the first party; receiving said transaction identifier along with said security routing identifier at said depository; and forwarding at least an address portion of said profile associated with said TID to said shipping service along with said SRID, wherein said shipping service receives the item from said second party tagged with only said SRID and said TID for identification purposes and subsequently sends said item to said first party utilizing at least said address portion of the profile.