But many more sites will have to embrace P3P for it to become useful for consumers. Polonetsky said DoubleClick was working on writing P3P policies, and planned to encourage partners to do so as well. Many sites are thoroughly reviewing their operations to answer the P3P questions, he said. The Web consortium plans to formally release P3P in three to six months. Daniel Weitzner, head of its technology and society group, said the consortium would initially target the 100 largest sites in hopes of pressuring others to follow.
Skeptics question how well social and business practices can be boiled down to bits and bytes.
Weinstein said she was worried that consumers may have a false sense of comfort if they mistake privacy statements for privacy protections. There is also a lot that P3P cannot do. It cannot address sites that go out of business and try to sell assets, including customer lists. Nor will it be able to detect dishonesty. P3P puts a little more power back in the hands of the user.