Title :
A privacy-friendly loyalty system for electronic marketplaces
Author :
Enzmann, Matthias ; Schneider, Markus
Author_Institution :
Inst. for Secure Telecooperation, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Darmstadt, Germany
Abstract :
Loyalty systems provide an interesting possibility for vendors in customer relationship management. This holds for both real world and online vendors. Beside potential benefits of loyalty systems, customers may fear an invasion of privacy, and thus often refuse to participate in such programs. We present two variants of a privacy-friendly loyalty system to be used by online vendors for issuing loyalty points. The systems prevent vendors from exploiting data for the creation of customer profiles by providing unconditional unlinkability of loyalty points with regard to purchases. We propose a simple token-based approach and a counter-based approach which is much more efficient while preserving the privacy and security properties. Furthermore, the counter-based loyalty system prevents pooling of loyalty points issued to distinct customers.
Keywords :
customer profiles; customer relationship management; data privacy; electronic commerce; counter-based approach; counter-based loyalty system; customer profile; customer relationship management; electronic marketplace; online vendor; privacy property; privacy-friendly loyalty system; security property; token-based approach; Consumer electronics; Customer profiles; Customer relationship management; Data mining; Data privacy; Data security; Electronic commerce; Joining processes; Waste materials; Web sites;
Conference_Titel :
e-Technology, e-Commerce and e-Service, 2004. EEE '04. 2004 IEEE International Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-2073-1
DOI :
10.1109/EEE.2004.1287337