Instead of Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, P3P should stand for Pathetic Pointless Paranoid Project. This is a destructive technology which would make web based communication difficult, web publishing complicated, and would dramatically reduce the amount of already existing and openly accessible information on the web. I'm very disappointed at W3C for wasting their resources on such nonsense.
Ursus
You must be a spammer, that's the only type of people that would think this is a useless idea. Unless you didn't even read the article and are trolling. I for one would love to see this project flourish. It does not force any web site to not use user data or collect it, it will just let users have more control and knowledge over what people do with their personal information.
While the inteded effect of P3P is good, as are the W3C's intentions, the key to this standard being effective is the software. Browsers like Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla need to recognize and support this, or it's useless. They need to strictly adhere to the P3P's specs, and they need to do it simply enough for the average user will understand.
IE6 does support P3P by default... and this is why now I have to go through all my websites which use cookies and try to make them P3P compliant. Already getting tons of complaints from users who can't login, it really sucks MS implemented this so fast.
P3P enables automated data collection by you specifying which information you give to sites conforming to a certain level.
This is automated.
P3P introduces another layer between you typing in your details (which you won't do unless you really want to spend a minute typing), and the web sites taking them from you. If they conform of course.
It's a bit like a credit card. You don't hand over any physical cash, you let them swipe a piece of plastic - almost like you didn't spend it!
P3P enables automated data collection.
You better hope that you configured your browser correctly.
Anonymous cowherd
"This site requires P3P. See here for details on how to configure your browser to view this site."
vmlinux,
I guess you did not really understand the whole concept. Also I don't see how spammers would suffer if P3P was implemented! P3P is good to make people think that their personal info is safe. But in fact it's not the case at all. It would only create tons of pseudo evidences that would give pseudo tech savvy lawyers more business. And the price to pay would be that the browsers would not allow browsing any sites that don't have the P3P policy files in their web root directory. Of course, most commercial sites will implement P3P right away! But what about the rest of the web? Banned from the P3P compatible browsers until the webmasters get familiar with P3P and make their web servers comply with the new nonsense.. Just think about all the useful information on all the non-commercial sites that will be suddenly missing from the web for some time if not for good. Also, read what 'Anonymous cowherd' wrote here. He's got a point!
January 03, 2002 - Worried about greedy online merchants snooping around your hard drive when you visit their e-stores? Wondering how much personal information a site actually collects and stores about you? You might be interested in P3P, an upcoming privacy standard that hopes to bring greater transparency to the way personal information is used over the Web.
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