The invention is concerned with enabling substantially anonymous purchases
of media products or other products (or access to an on-line service) to
be made on-line. In order to initiate a purchasing session, consisting of
one or more purchasing transactions, the purchaser authenticates himself
to a home provider computer (3) which ten allots an anonymous client
identifier (clientID) to the client for the purposes of that session. The
purchaser (1) contacts a vendor computer (6), using the anonymous
identifier (clientID) and an anonymising HTTP proxy, in order to place an
order for one or more products or services for which the vendor computer
has the right to authorize delivery. In order to obtain delivery of the
product or service from the repository computer (5), the purchaser (1)
provides the clientID to the repository computer (3).