P3P

The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project, or P3P, is a protocol allowing websites to declare their intended use of information they collect about browsing users. Designed to give users more control of their personal information when browsing, P3P was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and officially recommended on April 16, 2002.

Purpose

As the World Wide Web became a genuine medium in which to sell products and services, electronic commerce websites tried to collect more information about the people who purchased their merchandise. Some companies used controversial practices such as tracker cookies to ascertain the users' demographic information and buying habits, using this information to provide specifically targeted advertisements. Users who saw this as an invasion of privacy would sometimes turn off HTTP cookies or use proxy server to keep their personal information secure. P3P is designed to give users a more precise control of the kind of information that they allow to release. According to the W3C the main goal of P3P “is to increase user trust and confidence in the Web through technical empowerment.”

P3P is a machine-readable language that helps to express a website’s data management practices. P3P manages information through privacy policies. When a website uses P3P, they set up a set of policies that allows them to state their intended uses of...
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