In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, a method of
customizing the browsing experience of a user of a Web site comprised of
a plurality of Web pages is provided. Each Web page is indexed using at
least one coding system. A user record for each user is maintained on the
Web site, which contains personal information of the user coded in
accordance with said coding system. The user's browsing experience on the
site may thus be readily customized using the user's personal information
via code comparison. In accordance with a second aspect of the present
invention, a method of ensuring the privacy of the user's personal
information is provided through use of a unique Universal Anonymous
Identifier (UAI) assigned to each user by a third party registration
authority.