Identity management, privacy, and price discrimination

Various ways in which identity management systems can protect various types of information privacy while simultaneously supporting various forms of personalization and price discrimination are discussed. Identity management systems make it possible for individuals and organizations to engage in selective information relevation strategies. Pseudonymizing technologies can link various transactions by the same agent to the pseudonym industry, while anonymizing technologies make transactions from a certain agent to that agent's permanent, public identity and also ensures that adversaries can't link together various transactions from a same agent. Consumers can use identity management systems for selective disclosure of identity and attribute information. Combining privacy-enhancing technologies and price discrimination strategies via identity management systems attracts merchants to satisfy the needs of privacy-sensitive consumers without harming their abilities of pricing and marketing. © 2008 IEEE.