For as long as there have been commercial sites on the
World Wide
Web, there's been a struggle between the needs
of Web-based businesses and the in users' right to
privacy.
Web developers need to collect information about users, but
they also need to show respect for their privacy. The
Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, or
P3P, has
emerged as a technology to help satisfy the needs of both
parties.Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C),
P3P gives Web users more control over what information they
disclose about themselves. P3P-enabled web sites declare
their privacy policies to browsers. P3P-enabled browsers
can then compare the web sites' policies against the user's
privacy preferences and alert the
user if there is a
mismatch. As a result, users are better informed about web
privacy practices.
Web Privacy with P3P begins with
an introduction to P3P and the laws governing online
privacy. It then explains the inner workings of the P3P
protocol and shows web site developers how to configure
their sites for P3P compliance. It gives step-by-step
instructions for creating a P3P
policy, compact policy, and
policy reference file. The book then shifts to show
software developers how to build P3P compliance into their
products, with a chapter on APPEL, the W3C-developed
specification for declaring user preferences, and a chapter
devoted to guidelines for developing user interfaces for
P3P user agents.As chair of the P3P Specification Working
Group at the W3C and co-author of the P3P 1.0
specification, the author, Lorrie Faith Cranor, provides
unique insights into how and why P3P was developed. The
book also contains a foreword by Stanford law professor
Lawrence Lessig.The number of web developers using P3P
continues to grow. P3P support is now built into the newest
browser versions, including Microsoft Internet Explorer and
Netscape Navigator. This book explains how the P3P features
work in these browsers, and the impact they will have on
your web site. Modern software developers, privacy
consultants, corporate decision-makers, lawyers, public
policy-makers, and many others interested in online privacy
issues will make this book an essential addition to their
bookshelves.
ContentsI- Privacy and P3P
- Introduction to P3P
- The online privacy landscape
- Privacy technology
- P3P history
II- P3P-Enabling your Web site
- Overview and options
- P3P policy syntax
- Creating P3P policies
- Creating and referencing policy reference files
- Data schemas
- P3P-Enabled Web site examples
III- P3P Software and design
- P3P vocabulary design issues
- P3P user agents and other tools
- A P3P preference exchange language (APPEL)
- User interface
IV- Appendixes
- P3P policy reference file syntax quick reference
- Configuring Web servers to include P3P headers
- P3P in IE6
- How to create a customized privacy import file for
IE6
- P3P guiding principles