SIMT - a privacy preserving Web metrics tool

Consumer metrics for analyzing the success of customer relationship management (CRM) are gaining increasing importance. CRM software packages have become commonplace. However, two major shortcomings exist. First, most software solutions are not offered as a Web service on the Internet. Second, privacy restrictions need to be integrated into an overall framework of success indicators for consumer analysis. Whereas the first aspect can be addressed with standardized developer software for Web services, the second must consider privacy legislation, privacy specifications on Web sites (P3P), and data re-identification problems. To address these problems, we have developed a web service - called SIMT - that automatically adapts CRM indicators to an online retailer´s P3P policy. It is based on a declarative specification of privacy constraints, and syntactically extends P3P. This paper presents the prototype and describes how inference problems and legal restrictions have been addressed. The system has been tested on data from a large multi-channel retailer.