Designing a Social Protocol:
Lessons Learned from the Platform for Privacy Preferences

Abstract

The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3), under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), enables users and Web sites to reach explicit agreements regarding sites’ data privacy practices. The options chosen in developing the protocols, grammar, and vocabulary needed for an agreement lead the authors to a number of generalizations regarding the development of technology designed for "social" purposes.

In this paper we will explain the goals of P3; discuss the importance of simplicity, layering, and defaults in the development of social protocols; and examine the sometimes-difficult relationship between technical and policy decisions in this domain. 

Citation

Lorrie Faith Cranor and Joseph Reagle Jr. Designing a Social Protocol: Lessons Learned from the Platform for Privacy Preferences. In Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason and David Waterman, eds., Telephony, the Internet, and the Meda. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. (Paper originally presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Alexandria, VA, September 27-29 1997.) http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/pubs/dsp/

Full Text

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