Subj: Online Privacy: Perspectives of Microsoft
From: Bill Guidera, Microsoft, 202-263-5914, bguidera@microsoft.com
To: Internet Caucus Advisory Committee

CREATING TECHNOLOGIES FOR PRIVACY IN THE ONLINE WORLD:

MICROSOFT’S COMMITMENT TO P3P

FACT SHEET, MAY 2000

Microsoft Corp. has committed to developing business and consumer tools based on the 
P3P standards specification. These tools will be a significant advancement for Web sites 
and consumers in promoting better communication and understanding of how Web sites 
collect and use personal information. Web site operators will find it easier to write 
privacy statements that are comprehensive, easy-to-find and compliant with fair 
information principles. Consumers will have more information for making decisions about 
sharing information with Web sites based on their personal preferences.

The business tool, tentatively called the Privacy Statement Manager, will enable Web 
site operators to describe the site’s privacy practices, following the fair information principles 
of notice, choice, access, security and enforcement. The operator will use this service to 
create a privacy statement that is not only text-based (human-readable), but which also 
creates an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document that is machine-readable. This 
will be available as a free service on www.microsoft.com.

The consumer tool, tentatively called the Privacy Choice Manager, will enhance a 
consumer’s ability to select the personal information privacy preferences that are most 
meaningful to him or her in a flexible but comprehensive way. Each consumer will be able to 
select preferences concerning the collection, use and distribution of their personal 
information. Microsoft will develop the Privacy Choice Manager as a “proof-of-concept” 
browser-helper object. Microsoft will investigate market acceptance and the best opportunity 
to integrate the Privacy Choice Manager into upcoming releases of Microsoft ® products.

The P3P standards are what tie all of this together. With both the Web site privacy 
practices and the consumer’s preferences expressed in a standard vocabulary and syntax, 
the Privacy Choice Manager can compare and evaluate policies and individual preferences 
to help the consumer make better informed decisions about sharing personal information.

Once a consumer has run the Privacy Choice Manager and connects to an Internet site 
that has posted its privacy statement as an XML document, a couple of things will happen. 
First, the consumer’s machine will find the privacy statement and compare the Web site’s 
practices with the consumer’s preferences. If there are any mismatches, the application will 
provide feedback to the consumer, specifying where their preferences and the Web site’s 
practices don’t agree and warning the user that they may not want to provide personal 
information to that site. If there are no mismatches, the tool will signal to the consumer that 
the Web site is compliant with their personal preferences. A significant feature of these 
P3P-based tools is their interoperability. Microsoft strongly encourages other companies to 
develop similar P3P-based tools for their products in order to provide the broadest 
consumer benefit. Microsoft will participate in W3C interoperability- ========== testing 
events in June and September 2000 to demonstrate the functionality of the tools and ensure 
that they interoperate with tools from other companies.

ABOUT MICROSOFT

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, 
services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company 
offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great 
software — any time, any place and on any device.

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Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or 
other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks 
of their respective owners.

For more information, press only:
Tonya Klause, Waggener Edstrom, (703) 757-4501, tonyak@wagged.com
Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom, (503) 443-7000, rrt@wagged.com