The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)

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The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)

• Lorrie Faith CranorATT Labs-ResearchP3P
  Interest Group Co-ChairOctober 1998

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Background

• Dynamic privacy negotiation concept has been
  around for a while
• 95-96 PICS for privacy discussions
• Fall 96 Internet Privacy Working Group convened
  by CDT
• Summer 97 W3C launches P3P
• 96-98 Increasing government pressure and public
  concern motivates various self-regulatory efforts

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Government Pressure

• European Union directive
• FTC losing patience withself-regulation
• 14 of surveyed sites that collect personal data
  had privacy policies posted last spring
• Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act

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Public Concern

• April 1997 Louis Harris Poll of Internet users
• 5 say they have been the victim of an invasion
  of privacy while on the Internet
• 53 say they are concerned that information about
  which sites they visit will be linked to their
  email address and disclosed without their
  knowledge

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Threat or Tool?

• Threat Technology can automate data
  collection and processing
• Tool Technology can automate individual
  control over personal information

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Revealing Personal Info

• Advantages
• home delivery of products
• customized information and services
• ability to buy things on credit
• Disadvantages
• info might be used in unexpected ways
• info might be disclosed to other parties

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User Empowerment Approach

• Develop tools that allow people to control the
  use and dissemination of their personal
  information

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Empowerment Tools

• Prevent your actions from being linked to you
• Crowds - ATT Labs
• Allow you to develop persistent relationships not
  linked to each other or you
• Lucent Personal Web Assistant - Bell Labs
• Make informed choices about how your information
  will be used
• Platform for Privacy Preferences Project - W3C
• Know that assurances about information practices
  are trust worthy
• TRUSTe - Electronic Frontier Foundation and
  CommerceNet

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Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)

• A framework for automated privacy discussions
  under development by W3C
• Services communicate about practices
• Users exercise preferences over those practices
• User agent can facilitate automated decision
  making, prompt user, exchange data, etc.

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Fair Information Practice Principles
NoticeandChoice
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Simplifying Notice and Choice

• visual labels
• example (old) TRUSTe
• machine readable labels
• example Platform for Internet Content
  Selection (PICS)

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Beyond Labeling

• Labels support notice, but provide only limited
  support of choice
• P3P also supports
• Multiple privacy policies
• Explicit agreements
• Negotiation

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Basic P3P Concepts
proposal
agreement
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A Simple P3P Conversation

• User agent Get index.html
• Service Here is my P3P proposal - I collect
  click-stream data and computer information for
  web site and system administration and
  customization of site
• User agent OK, I accept your proposal
• Service Here is index.html

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More Complicated Conversations

• Service offers choice of proposals
• User agent makes counter proposal
• User agent rejects proposal and asks service for
  another offer
• Upon agreement, user agent automatically sends
  requested data
• No agreement is reached
• (see Automated Negotiation paper with Paul
  Resnick)

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Assertions that can be made in a P3P Proposal

• Proposal level
• Realm
• Disclosure URI
• Access
• Assurance
• Other disclosures
• Change agreement
• Retention

• Statement level
• Consequence
• Data category and/or element
• Purpose
• Identifiable use
• Recipients

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P3P VocabularyPurposes

• Completion and support of current activity
• Web site and system administration
• Customization of site to individuals

• Research and development
• Contacting visitors for marketing of services or
  products
• Other uses

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Data

• Referenced by category or element
• P3P methods may be used to transfer data
  referenced by element
• Coupling between privacy disclosure and data
  collection
• Base data set includes elements all
  implementations should know about
• Services may create their own elements
• Vocabulary includes 10 data categories

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Data Repository

• Users can store elements they dont mind
  providing to some services
• Services can gain read and/or write access
  through P3P agreements
• Elements can be automatically retrieved from
  repository when P3P methods or auto-fill forms
  are used

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Data element
Userinterface
health insurance ID
household income
favorite beverage
credit card number
social security
phone number
home address
bank account
hair color
zip code
gender
Data category
name
Info I consider somewhat sensitive
Info I do not consider sensitive
Info I consider highlysensitive
click-stream
financialaccount IDs
demographics
Physicalcontact info
Computer info
Info can be usedonly when necessaryto complete
atransaction
Info may be used to complete atransaction or
customize content
Info may be used by site for any purpose,but
may not bedisclosed to others
Preference
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W3C P3P Documents
APPEL (A P3P Preference Exchange Language)
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Guiding Principles
A statement of intent by members of the P3P
working groups and a recommendation on how to use
P3P to maximize privacy

• Information Privacy
• Notice and Communication

• Choice and Control
• Fairness and Integrity
• Security

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APPEL

• A rule language that expresses what should be
  done with P3P proposals
• Not essential to P3P, but useful for
• Sharing and installation of rulesets
• Communication to agents, search engines, proxies,
  or other servers
• Portability between products
• Could be replaced by XML or RDF query language

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Implementation and Deployment

• Need user agent and server implementations
• Need Web sites to create P3P proposals
• Web sites can use P3P without a special server,
  but P3P-compliant server and tools allow them to
  take advantage of flexibility

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Incremental adoption

• Levels allow implementers to ramp up gradually
• Good implementations provide incentives
• Privacy watchdog features to provide useful
  info about non-P3P-compliant sites
• Good data repository implementations in user
  agent save typing
• Good data management tools for Web servers
• Adoption drives more adoption

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Keys to Success

• Good end-user implementations
• easy to use
• easy to plug in recommended settings
• not annoying
• use incremental adoption model
• privacy friendly

• Good server implementations and tools
• Adoption by many Web sites
• Users find it useful
• Endorsement by government-regulatory and
  self-regulatory organizations

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Papers and demo of ATT P3P Proposal
Generatorwww.research.att.com/projects/p3p/P3P
Web site at W3Cwww.w3.org/p3p/