Faithful Webmonkey readers may recall that the last time we took a look at the
Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) was way back in the last century,
when the World Wide Web Consortium was working on the P3P as a way for
users to control their personal information online. But a lot has changed
since then: Not only has the notion of a "privacy policy" entered the mix,
but the P3P has refocused its goals and methods, and the W3C is unveiling a
new, stable P3P recommendation. It's all evidence that the general public's
relationship to electronic privacy has become a great deal more
sophisticated than it was in 1998.
The whole reason the W3C created the standard for privacy preferences
was to give users more control over their privacy as they surfed. The
theory was that browsers would keep track of your privacy preferences and
know which sites you'd like to surf anonymously, which sites you'd be
willing to trade your email address for coupon-like discounts (cheap
concert tickets, entry to a contest, that sort of thing), and which sites
you'd want to tell all your secrets to. But browsers have yet to realize
this dream — and they may never do so.
During the past couple of years, the P3P has shifted its focus as well as its method of implementation. The former goal of the P3P was transaction-based: Users get something by giving sites personal information. Now the plan of attack is to focus on the management of your privacy preferences and
the privacy policies of each Web site. But what, exactly, has changed? And why?
Let's take a look.
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