New privacy spec assumes you care

When I'm looking for something on the 'Net, I surf like mad. Traveling in and out of stores, I compare prices, availability, colors, the whole nine yards. And I wander in and out of pages with abandon.

Now, I don't know about you, but even though I value my privacy, I don't stop to read the privacy policy on every Web site I visit. How my purchases normally go are: search in Yahoo for the item; pick through the results; try several of the results, returning often to the original query; if I can find the item and it's in my ballpark, I buy it. I can't imagine reading privacy policies in the midst of all this.

A new system offered from the World Wide Web Consortium, called the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), would make the reading of privacy policies automatic. You click to a site, your browser automatically negotiates, via XML-tagged queries, between your preset privacy preferences and the site's policies. If there is agreement, you enter the store without a hitch. If there's some disagreement, then a pop-up box lets you know that there are some things out of synch and you proceed or head to another store to start the process all over again.

While I applaud the W3C for its efforts, several red flags are making their way up the flagpole. First, if you really wanted something in that store, I don't think a poor privacy policy is going to stop you. For most people, it hasn't thus far. Second, the way many of us travel in and out of stores those pop-up menus would be disabled within the first few minutes. I guarantee it. Third, the actual wording of the spec says, "policies must not make false or misleading statements." Right. A Web site operator knows that putting certain information into a policy would make a person more likely to shop there, chances are he will do that. And how many folks are going to challenge this? Where's the oversight?

I'm not convinced that this system will make me feel any more secure shopping online than I do or don't now. And having my system negotiate on my behalf or having the system present to me a human-readable version of the policy is not hitting the nail on the privacy head. Here's the part where I ask you, what is? What is the industry not seeing as a solution that needs to be out there?

Fed: Old nets out; Web in
Network World, 04/22/02

Sandra Gittlen is events editor for Network World's Seminars and Events Group. Previously, she was managing editor of Network World Fusion and senior reporter covering Internet research and standards for Network World magazine. She can be reached at sgittlen@nww.com.

E-commerce archive
Past newsletters.