Personalising and authentication

As soon as a user logs in to an onion.net website, he authenticates himself to the system and is allocated to a user profile. The system can now react by personalising the website or activating additional functions.

Personalising means the adapting of programmes, services or websites to the personal preferences and needs of a user. This adaptation can be carried out explicitly, for example by the user selecting a layout or determining the order of elements on the page, or implicitly such as in the case of the Internet mail-order company amazon.com, where recommendations of book titles and other products are sent on the basis of purchases and click streams.

Personalising and authentication are becoming ever more important. On many websites the user only has all functions available to him once he has logged on. And this is for a good reason – in view of current jurisdictions, every website operator should be anxious to allow no anonymous comments or forum entries on his site.