Method and Apparatus for Effecting a Data-Based Activity

A third-party intermediary manages a protocol that prohibits the third-party intermediary from substantively accessing data content that, at least in part, underlies received protocol-compliant requests. By one approach, these teachings provide for preventing substantive access to data information that is included within the protocol-compliant request as one or more functions of data, parts of which data may be in tokenized or untokenized form, wherein the values of the functions are generated using secrets, at least one of which is unavailable to the third-party intermediary. By one approach, tokens comprised of data in tokenized form are generated using secrets, at least one of which is unavailable to the third-party intermediary.