P3P Policy Editor 1.4

3P Policy Editor 1.4 IBM alphaWorks

www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/p3editor Beta version available for free download

Privacy Policy

Almost every site has a privacy policy, but until recently, most policies went unnoticed except by the most diligent Web surfers. Privacy policies have led to a firestorm of debate recently because some companies have been accused of breaching their commitments to site visitors. A privacy policy is a document that site builders must ensure is adequately spelled out, but unfortunately, one that most sites are ill-equipped to maintain.

Help is on the way in the form of the W3C specification named P3P, which stands for the Platform for Privacy Preferences Project. This is an automated way for Web sites to post privacy policies. With P3P, different user agents, such as browsers and proxy servers, can automatically interpret the privacy policy of each site you visit. The user agent determines whether this is a site to which visitors would be comfortable transferring data.

IBM alphaWorks' P3P Policy Editor 1.4 is not only a visual tool for creating the P3P version of your site's privacy policy, but it also lets you simultaneously work on the HTML version that should be posted on your site. The tool is currently under development pending finalization of the...