Disclosed is a private information management apparatus in which the information of high practical utility for a user in person may be acquired more efficiently and with higher responsiveness than is possible with a technique of keyword retrieval over the network. To this end, a private information management apparatus 1 for acquiring and storing the experience information pertinent to an event experienced by a user, and the private information input by a user, includes, as a structure for authenticating a counterpart terminal, with which the user is to exchange the experience information and the private information, an authentication key generating unit 59 for generating an authentication key for authenticating the terminal for which the information is publicized, an encryption unit 60 for encrypting part of the experience information and the private information stored as the publicized information, based on the encryption key, and an authentication processing unit 61 for verifying whether or not the authentication key received from the external terminal is one from the designated terminal. In this manner, the user is able to publicize only the information the user may feel not disinclined to publicize to another user, based on the taste information stored from user to user.