A Survey and Analysis of the P3P Protocol's Agents, Adoption, Maintenance,
and Future

Reay, Ian K.; Beatty, Patricia; Dick, Scott; Miller, James 

Dependable and Secure Computing, IEEE Transactions on, Vol.5, Iss.2,
April-June 2007

Pages:151-164

Abstract: In this paper, we survey the adoption of the Platform for Privacy
Preferences Protocol (P3P) on Internet Web sites to determine if P3P is a
growing or stagnant technology. We conducted a pilot survey in February 2005
and our full survey in November 2005. We compare the results from these two
surveys and the previous (July 2003) survey of P3P adoption. In general, we
find that P3P adoption is stagnant, and errors in P3P documents are a
regular occurrence. In addition, very little maintenance of P3P policies is
apparent. These observations call into question P3P's viability as an online
privacy-enhancing technology. Our survey exceeds other previous surveys in
our use of both detailed statistical analysis and scope; our February pilot
survey analyzed more than 23,000 unique Web sites, and our full survey in
November 2005 analyzed more than 100,000 unique Web sites.

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ed=164&arAuthor=Reay%2C+Ian+K.%3B+Beatty%2C+Patricia%3B+Dick%2C+Scott%3B+Mil
ler%2C+James