an analysis of p3p deployment
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An Analysis of P3P Deployment. Hyun Jin Kim Sensitive Information in a Wired World November 11, 2003. Introduction. Privacy Policies US self-regulatory approach to online privacy protection Description of a company’s data practices - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
An Analysis of P3P Deployment
Hyun Jin KimSensitive Information
in a Wired World
November 11, 2003
Introduction
Privacy Policies US self-regulatory approach to online
privacy protection
Description of a company’s data practices What information they collect from individuals
and what they do with it
P3P Specifications
Developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) over 5 years of work
Became an official W3C “Recommendation” just over a year ago on April 16, 2002
P3P Specifications
P3P Evaluation System Design
Automated process to measure P3P adoption and gather data from P3P-enabled web sites By Lorrie Faith Cranor, Simon Byers, and David
Kormann (AT&T Labs-Research) Five major components
URL Collection Mechanism P3P Policy Retriever Scripted Interface to the W3C P3P Validator P3P Policy Evaluator Generic Data Analysis Tools
URL Collector
To identify sets of sites of interest Existing lists of URLs Newly constructed lists that focus on
particular web sites Web spidering technique
Gather information from web directories and other sources
P3P Policy Retriever
Pearl Script to retrieve P3P information All policies, policy reference files, compact
header policies
P3P Validator
W3C P3P Validator Fetches P3P policy reference files, policy
files and compact policies Checks them for compliance with the P3P
1.0 Specification Stops validation upon encountering an error
Scripted interface to the W3C P3P Validator Retrieve P3P policies from sites with errors
in their policy reference files
P3P Policy Evaluator
Compares a web site’s policy with a user’s privacy preferences
Finds a mismatch between the P3P policy and the privacy preferences
Data Analysis
Outputs of policy evaluations gathered in a rectangular matrix Row – policy from a web site Column – APPEL rule set file
Run a Pearl script over the matrix Produce various tabulations
i.e., number of sites that returned mismatch between privacy preferences and P3P policies
Web Site Selection Focus on the sites frequently visited by users
PFF Most Popular 85 of the 100 busiest sites determined by the October 2001
Nielsen/NetRatings ranking of sites with the most unique visitors per month Excludes adult sites, children’s sites, business-to-business sites, and sites not
in the .com top level domain PFF Random
Random sample of 302 of the 7821 domains with at least 39,000 unique monthly visitors in October 2001 by Nielsen/NetRatings
PFF Refined Random 209 domains from the PFF Random list that were in the top 5,625 domains in
October 2001 by Nielsen/NetRatings Excludes adult sites, children’s sites, business-to-business sites, and non-dot-
coms Netscore Top 500
500 domains with the most unique visitors during July 2002 by comScore Media Matrix netScore Standard Traffic Measurement report
Key Measures Top 500 domains with the most unique visitors during July 2002 by comScore
Media Matrix Key Measures report Includes “third-party” sites
Web Site Selection (Cont.)
Alexia Top 500 domains by Alexia Traffic Ranking on Feb.4, 2003 Includes non-US domains and adult sites
Froogle 1,017 sites obtained by crawling the www.froogle.com web sites in
April 2003 Sites offer products for sale
Yahooligans 900 sites obtained by crawling www.yahooligans.com in April 2003 Sites for children ages 7-12
Firstgov 344 government sites indexed at www.firstgov.gov in April 2003 Includes US federal and state government sites and sites for some
quasi-government organizations News
2,429 sites by news.google.com in April 2003 Includes a variety of news-reporting organizations from the US and
other countries
P3P Adoption on May 2003
P3P Adoption (Cont.) P3P adoption increasing over time
Highest for the most popular web sites Key Measures site lists higher than Netscore
Presence of “third-party” sites To avoid having their cookies blocked by IE6
Alexa top 500 list lowest International nature Large number of adults sites
One third of the P3P-enabled sites had errors flagged by W3C P3P Validator 7% had errors that prevented their evaluation by
Privacy Bird evaluation engine Omit required components of a P3P policy Improperly referencing data elements
Privacy Bird Evaluation
Definition of not sharing data Sites share data only with agents that use it only to complete
the transaction for which it was provided or with delivery companies
Data sharing occurs only under an opt-in policy
3 standard settings Low
Trigger a red bird – policy does not match the preferences Collects health/medical info Share it with other companies Use it for analysis, marketing or to make decisions what content
or ads the user sees Engage in marketing but do not provide a way to opt-out
Privacy Bird Evaluation (Cont.)
Medium Same as low Sites sharing PII (physical contact info, online contact info,
government-issued identifier), financial info, or purchase info with other companies
Sites collecting PII but provide no access provisions
High Same as medium Sites sharing any personal info (including non-identified info) with
other companies Use it to determine the user’s habits, interests, or other
characteristics Sites contacting users for marketing Sites using financial or purchase info for analysis, marketing, or to
make decisions that may affect what content or ads the user sees
Privacy Bird Evaluation (Cont.)
Privacy Bird Evaluation (Cont.) Red bird on 24% of the evaluated sites
No opt-out of marketing and/or telemarketing ability offered
Most popular sites receive both green bird on low setting and red bird on high setting Green bird - Greater awareness of the importance of the
“choice” principle Red bird - Most offer rich ecommerce environments that
rely heavily on targeted marketing and profiling visitors
Red birds on Froogle and Yahooligans most likely Collect health and medical info
Types of Data Collected
Types of Data Collected (Cont.) Most collected data
Computer info and click stream info HTTP protocol used for retrieving content from website
Demographic data Less by Froogle and gov’t web sites
Online contact info, physical contact info, interactive data, unique ids Mostly by news web sites
Preference info, purchase info, and state management info (cookies) Fewer collected financial info (excludes purchase process)
Least collected data Content (email msgs, bulletin board postings, etc.) Government-issued identifiers Health information Political information Location information (ie. GPS positioning data) Information not falling into any other pre-defined categories
No government websites collect government-issued identifiers
Data Usage
Data Usage (Cont.) Almost all websites used data for
Completion and support of the activity for which data was provided Web site and system administration Research and development
Majority of sites used data for Email and postal mail marketing One-time tailoring of the site content Two-forms of pseudonymous profiling
Fewer sites used data for Telemarketing Profiling in which individuals are identified by name or other PII
Very few sites used data for Historical preservation (Not by government sites) Other purposes that do not fall into these categories
News web sites use data for almost every purpose.
Data Recipients and Sharing
Data Recipients and Sharing (Cont.)
Half the websites share PII with parties other than agents who use data for the purpose for which it was provided Most likely by
News web sites Froogle list sites with delivery company
Least likely by Government web sites
Choice Options
Choice Options (Cont.) Top sites most likely to engage in marketing
than less popular sites
Top sites most likely to offer choices (opt-in/out)
Internal choices (telemarketing and other marketing) offered more opt-out than opt-in
Third-party choices offered more opt-in than opt-out
Access Provisions
Access Provisions (Cont.)
92% of sites collecting identified data provides some access provisions Most provides access to both contact info
and other data Smaller number provides access to only
contact info or to all identified data Very few provides no access None provides access only to non-contact
info
Dispute Resolution Options and Remedies
Dispute Resolution Options and Remedies Individuals can contact customer service to
resolve their disputes on most sites
About one-third offered resolution via independent organization (ie. Privacy seal provider) by most popular sites
Very few indicated resolution of dispute under an applicable law
Almost none indicated resolution in court
Data Retention Policies
Data Retention Policies (Cont.)
Majority did not have a data retention policy for all of the data they collected
Government web sites more likely to have a policy of not retaining info or to have a retention policy based on a legal requirement
Conclusion P3P adoption is increasing over time, especially for the
most popular web sites Yahooligans (sites for children) most likely to offer opt-in
policies Large number of websites with technical errors in their
P3P policies Debates continue about the need for further privacy
legislation and the effectiveness of industry self-regulation in the privacy area. Essential to have good statistics and privacy policies
US government web sites began posting P3P policies to comply with the privacy requirements of section 208 of the E-Government Act of 2002 Continue web sweeps of gov’t web sites to monitor
compliance with these requirements