INFORMATION PROCESSING DEVICE AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD, SERVICE PROVIDING SYSTEM, AND COMPUTER-EXECUTABLE PROGRAM FOR THE SAME

A community, which is a group of users having common interests, has attributes such as the name of the community, the interests shared, the number of members, average age of the members, gender ratio of the members, and so forth. Corporations provide services to the users of a community to which the corporations have permission to access. The corporations can know a portion of the attribute information of the community, but cannot know the personal information of the individual users. Distribution firms can obtain personal information of users belonging to a community and deliver merchandise thereto, by entering into contract with that community. The distribution firms receive merchandise shipping commissions using serial numbers, so there is no exchange of personal information between the corporations and the distribution firms. Accordingly, services can be provided from corporations to users without disclosing personal information of the users to the corporations.