The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) will soon change all that. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), P3P is a specification that standardizes privacy policy generation and enables browsers and plug-ins to translate sites' policies into point-and-click user interfaces.. . .
The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) will soon change all that. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), P3P is a specification that standardizes privacy policy generation and enables browsers and plug-ins to translate sites' policies into point-and-click user interfaces.

At its most basic level, P3P is a standardized set of multiple-choice questions covering all the major aspects of a Web site's privacy policies. Taken together, they present a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled Web sites make this information available in a standard, machine-readable format. P3P-enabled browsers can read this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumer's own set of privacy preferences. If a site violates those preferences, the browser can issue alerts or even block sites that don't conform.

"What makes P3P so good is that it empowers users to make choices on the information collected," says Josh Freed, director of privacy technology for Washington, D.C.-based Internet Education Foundation. Because of the power it gives consumers, it will force sites not only to P3P-enable their privacy policies, but also to improve the policies they have, he adds. If a site does not cater to user privacy preferences, it will lose their business to sites that do.

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