Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) Project

The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) has been developed by the World Wide Web Consortium.

It should emerge as an industry standard to provide a simple, automated way for users to gain more control over the use of personal information on Web sites they visit.

But how does it work?

According to W3C's P3P site:

"At its most basic level, P3P is a standardized set of multiple-choice questions, covering all the major aspects of a Web site's privacy policies. Taken together, they present a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled Web sites make this information available in a standard, machine-readable format.

P3P enabled browsers can 'read' this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumer's own set of privacy preferences. P3P enhances user control by putting privacy policies where users can find them, in a form users can understand, and, most importantly, enables users to act on what they see."

Will it work and help the user to protect their privacy?

Let's see and wait. I have not seen anything yet on software that can be used with it, only sites... also, I am not sure if this approach really helps, what do others think?

Looking at the public archive of p3p-public-comment does not give me much hope.

What do other evolters think? I would be very happy to read your views and opinions on this topic, thanks.