ITinfo: P3P Plug-In for Browsers Ensures Personal Privacy

Personal Privacy Online

New software warns of risky websites

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P3P Plug-In for Browsers Ensures Personal Privacy

by Dave Murphy
ISSN 1535-3613

P3P is the new buzzword. By this time next year, you'll have heard about it on all the major news channels both online and offline. TV, newspapers, and magazines will have reported it to death. It's going to change the way you and I use the web.

When was the last time you read the privacy policy of the sites you visit? When did you last check back to see if the policy you read last month was changed? P3P will take care of it for you.

Have you ever been bombarded with spam just because you visited a website? P3P will take care of it for you.

Have you ever had the personal information you typed into an onlien form sold (or given) to another merchant without your permission? P3P will take care of it for you.

P3P, the Platform for Privacy Preferences, is a long-term project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and will be available as a plug-in (software addition) to your favorite web browser sometime in the next year.

Initially, software to make browsers P3P-compatible will be added with a downloadable plug-in, but eventually P3P features will be built into Web browsers.

P3P won't really take care of all your privacy problems for you, but it will warn you when you visit a P3P-compliant site that doesn't meet the minimum level of privacy that you prefer. You can still visit every site, you'll just get a warning that the site you're visiting is risky to your privacy.

I'm looking forward to standards like P3P. Reading privacy statements is confusing at best, and it's always a drag. The statements are usually hacked out at the last minute and they read as if they were written by the company receptionist, who's probably no composition major. Yet, it's important to read the statements becasue we never know what the site's owners will do with our information unless we check.

For example, ITrain collects phone numbers, addresses, even descriptions of computer habits from our members. Many members even pay their dues using a credit card. Holding this information is an important responsibility, and we recognize the trust our members place in the association to keep this information private. We have a very strict privacy policy. If you want to read it, check the link below.

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References

World Wide Web Consortium
ITrain Privacy Policy
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updated July 11, 2000
http://dgl.com/itinfo/2000/it000711a.html