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Weekly News Digest

April 22, 2002 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

W3C Issues Recommendation for Privacy Standard

According to the announcement, declaring P3P a W3C Recommendation indicates that it is a stable document, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread adoption. P3P was designed by a Working Group composed of privacy advocates, Web technology leaders, data protection commissioners, and global e-commerce companies.

P3P-enabled Web sites present a machine-readable version of the site's privacy policy, a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled browsers can "read" this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumer's own set of privacy preferences. P3P enhances user control by putting privacy policies where users can find them and in a form they can understand, and it enables users to act on what they see.

"With P3P we are enabling the development of a whole new class of Web tools and services that will help users protect their privacy while streamlining e-commerce transactions," said Daniel J. Weitzner, W3C Technology and Society Domain leader. "The fact that the Web now has a standard language for describing privacy practices will enable a new level of transparency in Web-based interactions. The added facility for dealing with privacy issues will be especially important with mobile and other new forms of Web access."

Source: World Wide Web Consortium