Microsoft develops Net privacy initiatives
By Tim Clark
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 6, 1999, 4:55 p.m. PT
Microsoft and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are proposing new ways to
simplify how Web sites--particularly small ones with relatively few technical
capabilities--create and post their privacy policies.
The initiative involves new Privacy Wizard tools, which are free to use for Web sites that
wish to set up privacy policies, plus two standards-related initiatives before the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C).
Early next week Microsoft and Truste, a business-oriented privacy organization, will post
tools for creating privacy policies on the MSN LinkExchange Web site. LinkExchange,
which Microsoft purchased in November, provides online tools, including an ad banner
exchange, for small Net businesses.
"This makes it simple for small businesses and Web site owners to create a
machine-readable privacy policy that we believe creates the foundation for a reliable trust
infrastructure on the Internet," said Saul Klein, a Microsoft group program manager.
Making a policy machine-readable means it can be read automatically by a Web browser
or search engine to determine whether a Web site's privacy practices are acceptable to a
user. No current browsers have that capability.
Online privacy is a key concern of consumers, and last week a study from trade group
Information Technology Association of America and Ernst & Young named privacy as a top
barrier to the growth of Internet commerce. But only a small percentage of Web sites post
privacy policies, and efforts to date have concentrated on larger companies.
The Microsoft-Electronic Frontier Foundation initiatives come as the United States and the
European Union are knocking heads over privacy policies.
The Europeans demand legal protections on personal data,
while the United States has argued that industry
self-regulation should be given a chance.
Today's announcement skirts the policy issues to focus on
using technology to facilitate the exchange of information
about a Web site's privacy policy with site visitors.
The goal of the announcement is for Web sites to post their
privacy policies not only as text but in a computer format that
a Web browser could detect when visiting a site. Then the
Web user could decide what kind of personal data to give the
site, depending on the user's preferences and the site's
privacy policy. A standard format could automate that process.
"E-commerce and privacy go hand in hand," Tara Lemmey, president of EFF, said in a
statement. "Any Web site that collects people's personal information has a responsibility
to disclose how it is using that information."
The Privacy Preferences Project (P3P), a standards effort overseen by the W3C, is an
industry effort to create a technology framework for communicating privacy policies no
matter what the specific policies are.
"We've been very supportive of P3P," said Deirdre Mulligan, staff counsel of privacy
advocates Center for Democracy and Technology. "We think there's a real need that's
different from the question of whether we need or don't need legislation."
Microsoft and EFF have submitted two privacy-related "notes" for changes to P3P. One
essentially takes the Privacy Wizard and submits it as a standard.
The second is a new "e-commerce data schema" that outlines privacy and security
guidelines to make online buying safer for consumers. It calls for Web sites to disclose
how they will use e-commerce data collected from a shopper and to abide by online
enforcement mechanisms such as Truste, BBBOnline, the European Union Data Directive,
and national laws.
The second e-commerce proposal was developed in conjunction with others, including
AT&T.
The Microsoft-driven effort could conflict with new "digitalme" technology that Novell
unveiled last month. Based on Novell's directory technology, the new tool would centralize
information on a user's access rights and privacy preferences so the same data wouldn't
have to be entered at each Web site. It would allow users to specify the information a
specific site can retrieve. |
