A form of advertisement which is becoming popular on the web is based on digital coupon (e-coupon) distribution. E-coupons are the digital analogue of paper coupons which are used to provide customers with incentives to buy some merchandise. Nowadays, the potential of digital coupons has not been fully exploited on the web. This is mostly due to the lack of an "efficient" protocol for e-coupon distribution which ensures that e-coupons are released by advertisers according to the merchant's specification and that customers use them properly. In this paper we propose a protocol for e-coupons which satisfies these security requirements. Our protocol is lightweight and preserves users privacy since it does not require users' registration.
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