Personal information of a user is provided to an information provider from any location, through a simple apparatus, and with reliability. Personal information is stored beforehand in a user profile database of a server. When the user accesses a service provider device from a terminal device through the server and the Internet, the service provider device requests the personal information of that user. The server reads the requested personal information from the user profile database and transfers the personal information to the service provider device. This novel arrangement makes it unnecessary for the user to input the personal information.