Copyright ©2002 W3C® (MIT, INRIA, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark, document use and software licensing rules apply.
This is the specification of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). This document, along with its normative references, includes all the specification necessary for the implementation of interoperable P3P applications.
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. The latest status of this document series is maintained at the W3C.
This is the 28 January 2002 Proposed Recommendation of the Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification. The Proposed Recommendation review period ends on 25 February 2002. This document has been produced by the P3P Specification Working Group (Members-only) as part of the P3P Activity.
W3C Advisory Committee representatives are encouraged to review this specification and return comments to p3p-review@w3.org, which is visible to the W3C Team only.
After the review, the W3C Director will announce the document's disposition: it may become a W3C Recommendation (possibly with minor changes), it may revert to Working Draft status, or it may be dropped as a W3C work item. This announcement should not be expected sooner than 14 days after the end of the review.
A change log with a summary of the modifications occurred from the 28 September Last Call Working Draft is included at the end of this document for convenience
Please send comments to www-p3p-public-comments@w3.org (publicly archived).
Publication as a Proposed Recommendation does not imply endorsement by the W3C membership: this document may still be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. A list of current public W3C Working Drafts can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) enables Web sites to express their privacy practices in a standard format that can be retrieved automatically and interpreted easily by user agents. P3P user agents will allow users to be informed of site practices (in both machine- and human-readable formats) and to automate decision-making based on these practices when appropriate. Thus users need not read the privacy policies at every site they visit.
Although P3P provides a technical mechanism for ensuring that users can be informed about privacy policies before they release personal information, it does not provide a technical mechanism for making sure sites act according to their policies. Products implementing this specification MAY provide some assistance in that regard, but that is up to specific implementations and outside the scope of this specification. However, P3P is complementary to laws and self-regulatory programs that can provide enforcement mechanisms. In addition, P3P does not include mechanisms for transferring data or for securing personal data in transit or storage. P3P may be built into tools designed to facilitate data transfer. These tools should include appropriate security safeguards.
The P3P1.0 specification defines the syntax and semantics of P3P privacy policies, and the mechanisms for associating policies with Web resources. P3P policies consist of statements made using the P3P vocabulary for expressing privacy practices. P3P policies also reference elements of the P3P base data schema -- a standard set of data elements that all P3P user agents should be aware of. The P3P specification includes a mechanism for defining new data elements and data sets, and a simple mechanism that allows for extensions to the P3P vocabulary.
P3P version 1.0 is a protocol designed to inform Web users of the data-collection practices of Web sites. It provides a way for a Web site to encode its data-collection and data-use practices in a machine-readable XML format known as a P3P policy. The P3P specification defines:
The goal of P3P version 1.0 is twofold. First, it allows Web sites to present their data-collection practices in a standardized, machine-readable, easy-to-locate manner. Second, it enables Web users to understand what data will be collected by sites they visit, how that data will be used, and what data/uses they may "opt-out" of or "opt-in" to.
As an introduction to P3P, let us consider one common scenario that makes use of P3P. Claudia has decided to check out a store called CatalogExample, located at http://www.catalog.example.com/. Let us assume that CatalogExample has placed P3P policies on all their pages, and that Claudia is using a Web browser with P3P built in.
Claudia types the address for CatalogExample into her Web browser. Her browser is able to automatically fetch the P3P policy for that page. The policy states that the only data the site collects on its home page is the data found in standard HTTP access logs. Now Claudia's Web browser checks this policy against the preferences Claudia has given it. Is this policy acceptable to her, or should she be notified? Let's assume that Claudia has told her browser that this is acceptable. In this case, the homepage is displayed normally, with no pop-up messages appearing. Perhaps her browser displays a small icon somewhere along the edge of its window to tell her that a privacy policy was given by the site, and that it matched her preferences.
Next, Claudia clicks on a link to the site's online catalog. The catalog section of the site has some more complex software behind it. This software uses cookies to implement a "shopping cart" feature. Since more information is being gathered in this section of the Web site, the Web server provides a separate P3P policy to cover this section of the site. Again, let's assume that this policy matches Claudia's preferences, so she gets no pop-up messages. Claudia continues and selects a few items she wishes to purchase. Then she proceeds to the checkout page.
The checkout page of CatalogExample requires some additional information: Claudia's name, address, credit card number, and telephone number. Another P3P policy is available that describes the data that is collected here and states that her data will be used only for completing the current transaction, her order.
Claudia's browser examines this P3P policy. Imagine that Claudia has told her browser that she wants to be warned whenever a site asks for her telephone number. In this case, the browser will pop up a message saying that this Web site is asking for her telephone number, and explaining the contents of the P3P statement. Claudia can then decide if this is acceptable to her. If it is acceptable, she can continue with her order; otherwise she can cancel the transaction.
Alternatively, Claudia could have told her browser that she wanted to be warned only if a site is asking for her telephone number and was going to give it to third parties and/or use it for uses other than completing the current transaction. In that case, she would have received no prompts from her browser at all, and she could proceed with completing her order.
Note that this scenario describes one hypothetical implementation of P3P. Other types of user interfaces are also possible.
P3P policies use an XML with Namespaces (cf. [XML] and [XML-Name]) encoding of the P3P vocabulary to to provide contact information for the legal entity making the representation of privacy practices in a policy, enumerate the types of data or data elements collected, and explain how the data will be used. In addition, policies identify the data recipients, and make a variety of other disclosures including information about dispute resolution, and the address of a site's human-readable privacy policy. P3P policies must cover all relevant data elements and practices (but note that legal issues regarding law enforcement demands for information are not addressed by this specification; it is possible that a site that otherwise abides by its policy of not redistributing data to others may be required to do so by force of law). P3P declarations are positive, meaning that sites state what they do, rather than what they do not do. The P3P vocabulary is designed to be descriptive of a site's practices rather than simply an indicator of compliance with a particular law or code of conduct. However, user agents may be developed that can test whether a site's practices are compliant with a law or code.
P3P policies represent the practices of the site. Intermediaries such as telecommunication providers, Internet service providers, proxies and others may be privy to the exchange of data between a site and a user, but their practices may not be governed by the site's policies. In addition, note that each P3P policy is applied to specific web resources (web pages, images, cookies, etc.) listed in a policy reference file. By placing one or more P3P policies on a web site, a company or organization does not make any statements about the privacy practices associated with other web resources not mentioned in their policy reference file, with other online activities that do not involve data collected on web sites covered by their P3P policy, or with offline activities that do not involve data collected on web sites covered by their P3P policy.
P3P1.0 user agents can be built into Web browsers, browser plug-ins, or
proxy servers. They can also be implemented as Java applets or JavaScript; or
built into electronic wallets, automatic form-fillers, or other user data
management tools. P3P user agents look for references to a P3P policy at a
well-known location, in P3P headers in HTTP responses, and in P3P
link
tags embedded in HTML content. These references indicate
the location of a relevant P3P policy. User agents can fetch the policy from
the indicated location, parse it, and display symbols, play sounds, or
generate user prompts that reflect a site's P3P privacy practices. They can
also compare P3P policies with privacy preferences set by the user and take
appropriate actions. P3P can perform a sort of "gate keeper" function for
data transfer mechanisms such as electronic wallets and automatic form
fillers. A P3P user agent integrated into one of these mechanisms would
retrieve P3P policies, compare them with user's preferences, and authorize
the release of data only if a) the policy is consistent with the user's
preferences and b) the requested data transfer is consistent with the policy.
If one of these conditions is not met, the user might be informed of the
discrepancy and given an opportunity to authorize the data release
themselves.
The P3P1.0 Specification places few requirements on the user interfaces of P3P user agents. Thus user agent implementers may each make their own choices about what words and symbols to present to users to provide information about a web site's privacy policy. Implementers need not use the definitions found in this specification verbatim in their user interfaces. They should, however, make sure that whatever information they present to the user accurately represents the P3P policies described, as per Appendix 7, "P3P Guiding Principles".
Web sites can implement P3P1.0 on their servers by translating their
human-readable privacy policies into P3P syntax and then publishing the
resulting files along with a policy reference file that indicates the parts
of the site to which the policy applies. Automated tools can assist site
operators in performing this translation. P3P1.0 can be implemented on
existing HTTP/1.1-compliant Web servers without requiring additional or
upgraded software. Servers may publish their policy reference files at a well-known location, or they may reference
their P3P policy reference files in HTML/XHTML content using a
link
tag. Alternatively, compatible servers may be configured to
insert a P3P extension header into all HTTP responses that indicates the
location of a site's P3P policy reference file.
Web sites have some flexibility in how they use P3P: they can opt for one P3P policy for their entire site or they can designate different policies for different parts of their sites. A P3P policy MUST cover all data generated or exchanged as part of a site's HTTP interactions with visitors. In addition, some sites may wish to write policies that cover all data an entity collects, regardless of how the data is collected.
Significant sections were removed from earlier drafts of the P3P1.0 specification in order to facilitate rapid implementation and deployment of a P3P first step. A future version of the P3P specification might incorporate those features after P3P1.0 is deployed. Such specification would likely include improvements based on feedback from implementation and deployment experience as well as four major components that were part of the original P3P vision but not included in P3P1.0:
This document, along with its normative references, includes all the specification necessary for the implementation of interoperable P3P applications.
The following key words are used throughout the document and have to be read as interoperability requirements. This specification uses words as defined in RFC2119 [KEY] for defining the significance of each particular requirement. These words are:
The P3P specification defines, with the exception of section 2.2.2, section 2.2.3 and section 4, an XML with Namespaces syntax (cf. [XML] and [XML-Name]). In the following, for the sake of brevity we will liberally talk about "XML", meaning the more accurate "XML with Namespaces".
A BNF-like notation is also used thorough the specification: the [ABNF] notation used in this specification is specified in RFC2234 and summarized in Appendix 6. However, note that in the case of XML syntax, such ABNF syntax is only a grammar representative used to enhance readability (lacking, for example, all the syntactic flexibilities that are implicitly included in XML, e.g. whitespace rules, quoting using either single quote (') or double quote ("), character escaping, comments, case sensitivity, order of attributes, namespace handling), and as such it has no normative value. All the XML syntax defined in this specification MUST conform to the XML Schema for P3P (see Appendix 4), which, together with the other constraints expressed in this specification using natural language, constitutes the normative definition.
The (non-normative) DTD provided in Appendix 5 MAY be used to verify that P3P files are valid. However, there are some valid files that may be rejected if checked against the DTD due to their use of namespaces.
As far as the non-XML syntax defined in this specification is concerned (section 2.2.2 defining P3P's HTTP header, section 2.2.3 defining usage of P3P in HTML, and section 4 defining compact policies), instead, the ABNF notation (together with the other constraints expressed in this specification using natural language) constitutes the normative definition.
user.home-info.postal
". The
P3P1.0 base data schema specifies a number of data sets.DATASCHEMA
element. P3P1.0 defines a standard data schema
called the P3P base data schema.Locating a P3P policy is one of the first steps in the operation of the P3P protocol. Services use policy references to state what policy applies to a specific URI or set of URIs. User agents use policy references to locate the privacy policy that applies to a Web resource, so that they can process that policy for the benefit of their user.
Policy references are used extensively as a performance optimization. P3P policies are typically several kilobytes of data, while a URI that references a privacy policy is typically less than 100 bytes. In addition to the bandwidth savings, policy references also reduce the need for computation: policies can be uniquely associated with URIs, so that a user agent need only parse and process a policy once rather than process it with every document to which the policy applies. Furthermore, by placing the information about relevant policies in a centralized location, Web site administration is simplified.
A policy reference file is used to associate P3P policies with certain regions of URI-space. The policy reference file is an XML with Namespaces (see [XML] and [XML-Name]) file that can specify the policy for a single Web document, portions of a Web site, or for an entire site. The policy reference file may refer to one or more P3P policies; this allows for a single reference file to cover an entire site, even if different P3P policies apply to different portions of the site.The policy reference file is used to make any or all of the following statements:
All of these statements are made in the body of the policy reference file.
This section describes the mechanisms used to indicate the location of a policy reference file. Detailed syntax is also given for the supported mechanisms.
The location of the policy reference file can be indicated using one of four mechanisms. The policy reference file
link
tag, orlink
tag, orNote that if user agents support retrieving HTML (resp. XHTML) content over HTTP, they MUST handle mechanisms 1, 2 and 3 (resp. 4) listed above interchangeably. See also the requirements for non-ambiguity.
Policies are applied at the level of resources. A "page" from the user's perspective may be composed of multiple HTTP resources; each may have its own P3P policy associated with it. As a practical note, however, placing many different P3P policies on different resources on a single page may make rendering the page and informing the user of the relevant policies difficult for user agents. Additionally, services are recommended to attempt to craft their policy reference files such that a single policy reference file covers any given "page"; this will speed up the user's browsing experience.
For a user agent to process the policy that applies to a given resource, it must locate the policy reference file for that resource, fetch the policy reference file, parse the policy reference file, fetch any required P3P policies, and then parse the P3P policy or policies.
This document does not specify how P3P policies may be associated with Web resources retrieved by means other than HTTP. However, it does not preclude future development of mechanisms for associating P3P policies with resources retrieved using other protocols. Furthermore, additional methods of associating P3P policies with HTTP resources may be developed in the future.
Web sites using P3P MAY (and, are strongly encouraged to) place a policy
reference file in a "well-known" location. To do this, a policy reference
file would be made available on the site at the path
/w3c/p3p.xml
.
Note that sites are not required to use this mechanism; however, by using this mechanism, sites can ensure that their P3P policy will be accessible to user agents before any other resources are requested from the site. This will reduce the need for user agents to access the site using safe zone practices. Additionally, if a site chooses to use this mechanism, the policy reference file located in the well-known location is not required to cover the entire site. For example, sites where not all of the content is under the control of a single organization MAY choose not to use this mechanism, or MAY choose to post a policy reference file which covers only a limited portion of the site.
Use of the well-known location for a policy reference file does not preclude use of other mechanisms for specifying a policy reference file. Portions of the site MAY use any of the other supported mechanisms to specify a policy reference file, so long as the non-ambiguity requirements are met.
For example, imagine a shopping-mall Web site run by the MallExample
company. On their Web site (mall.example.com
), companies
offering goods or services at the mall would get a company-specific subtree
of the site, perhaps in the path
/companies/company-name
. The MallExample company may
choose to put a policy reference file in the well-known location which covers
all of their site except the /companies
subtree. Then if the
ShoeStoreExample company has some content in
/companies/shoestoreexample
, they could use one of the other
mechanisms to indicate the location of a policy reference file covering their
portion of the mall.example.com
site.
One case where using the well-known location for policy reference files is
expected to be particularly useful is in the case of a site which has divided
its content across several hosts. For example, consider a site which uses a
different logical host for all of its Web-based applications than for its
static HTML content. The other mechanisms allowed for specifying the location
of a policy reference file require that some URI on the host being accessed
must be fetched to locate the policy reference file. However, the well-known
location mechanism has no such requirement. Consider the example of an HTML
form located on www.example.com
. Imagine that the action URI on
that form points to server cgi.example.com
. The policy reference
file that covers the form is unable to make any statements about the action
URI that processes the form. However, the site administrator publishes a
policy reference file at http://cgi.example.com/w3c/p3p.xml
that
covers the action URI, thus enabling a user agent to easily locate the P3P
policy that applies to the action URI before submitting the form contents.
Any document retrieved by HTTP MAY point to a policy reference file
through the use of a new response header, the P3P
header ([P3P-HEADER]). If a site is using P3P headers, it
SHOULD include this on responses for all appropriate request methods,
including HEAD
and OPTIONS
requests.
The P3P header gives one or more comma-separated directives. The syntax follows:
[1] | p3p-header |
= |
`P3P: ` p3p-header-field *(`,` p3p-header-field) |
[2] | p3p-header-field |
= |
policy-ref-field | compact-policy-field | extension-field |
[3] | policy-ref-field |
= |
`policyref="` URI-reference `"` |
[4] | extension-field |
= |
token [`=` (token | quoted-string) ] |
Here,
URI-reference is defined as per RFC 2396 [URI], token and
quoted-string are defined by [HTTP1.1]. |
In keeping with the rules for other HTTP headers, the name of the P3P header may be written with any casing. The contents should be specified using the casing precisely as specified in this document.
The policyref
directive gives a URI which specifies the
location of a policy reference file which may reference the P3P policy
covering the document that pointed to the reference file, and possibly others
as well. When the policyref
attribute is a relative URI, that
URI is interpreted relative to the request URI. Note that fetching the URI
given in the policyref
directive MAY result in a 300-class HTTP
return code (redirection); user agents MUST interpret those redirects with
normal HTTP semantics. Services should note, of course, that use of redirects
will increase the time required for user agents to find and interpret their
policies. The policyref
URI MUST NOT be used for any other
purpose beyond locating and referencing P3P policies.
The compact-policy-field
is used to specify "compact
policies". This is described in Section 4.
User agents which find unrecognized directives (in the
extension-field
s) MUST ignore the unrecognized directives. This
is to allow easier deployment of future versions of P3P.
1. Client makes a GET
request.
GET /index.html HTTP/1.1 Host: catalog.example.com Accept: */* Accept-Language: de, en User-Agent: WonderBrowser/5.2 (RT-11)
2. Server returns content and the P3P
header pointing to the
policy of the resource.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK P3P: policyref="http://catalog.example.com/P3P/PolicyReferences.xml" Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 7413 Server: CC-Galaxy/1.3.18
link
TagServers MAY serve HTML content with embedded link
tags (cf.
[HTML]) that indicate the location of the relevant P3P
policy reference file. This use of P3P does not require any change in the
server behavior.
The link
tag encodes the policy reference information that
could be expressed using the P3P
header. The link
tag takes the following form (here, we just produce one possible ABNF format
for the link tag, and suppose the [HTML] syntax rules can
be used when using such a tag into an HTML file):
[5] | p3p-link-tag |
= |
`<link rel="P3Pv1" href="` URI `">` |
Here, URI is defined as per RFC 2396 [URI]. |
When the href
attribute is a relative URI, that URI is
interpreted relative to the request URI.
In order to illustrate with an example the use of the link
tag, we consider the policy reference expressed in Example 2.1 using HTTP headers. That example can
be equivalently expressed using the link tag with the following piece of
HTML:
<link rel="P3Pv1" href="http://catalog.example.com/P3P/PolicyReferences.xml">
Finally, note that since the p3p-link-tag
is embedded in an
HTML document, its character encoding will be the same as that of the HTML
document. In contrast to P3P policy and policy reference documents (see section 2.3 and section 3
below), the p3p-link-tag
need not be encoded using [UTF-8]. Note also that the link
tag is not
case sensitive.
link
tagCorrespondingly to what seen for the HTML link
tag, P3P also
supports XHTML (cf. [XHTML-MOD]). Servers MAY serve
XHTML content that, using the XHTML Link Module (cf. Section
5.19 of [XHTML-MOD]), indicate the location of
the relevant P3P policy reference file with an embedded XHTML
link
tag. Like in the HTML case, an XHTML link
tag
can be used to encode the policy reference information that could be
expressed using the P3P
header, by:
rel
attribute to "P3Pv1
"href
attribute to the URI of the relevant P3P
policy reference fileThe mechanisms described here MAY be used for HTTP transactions over any underlying protocol. This includes plain-text HTTP over TCP/IP connections or encrypted HTTP over SSL connections, as well as HTTP over any other communications protocol designers wish to implement.
URIs MAY contain network port numbers, as specified in RFC 2396 [URI]. For the purposes of P3P, different ports on a single host MUST be considered to be separate "sites". Thus, for example, the policy reference file at the well-known location for www.example.com on port 80 (http://www.example.com/w3c/p3p.xml) would not give any information about the policies which apply to www.example.com when accessed over SSL (as the SSL communication would take place on a different port, 443 by default).
This document does not specify how P3P policies may be associated with resources retrieved by means other than HTTP. However, it does not preclude future development of mechanisms for associating P3P policies with resources retrieved over other protocols. Furthermore, additional methods of associating P3P policies with resources retrieved using HTTP may be developed in the future.
This section explains the contents of policy reference files in detail.
Consider the case of a Web site wishing to make the following statements:
/P3P/Policies.xml#first
applies to the entire
site, except resources whose paths begin with /catalog
,
/cgi-bin
, or /servlet
./P3P/Policies.xml#second
applies to all
resources whose paths begin with /catalog
./P3P/Policies.xml#third
applies to all
resources whose paths begin with /cgi-bin
or
/servlet
, except for /servlet/unknown
./servlet/unknown
.These statements can be represented by the following XML:
<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY-REFERENCES> <EXPIRY max-age="172800"/> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#first"> <INCLUDE>/*</INCLUDE> <EXCLUDE>/catalog/*</EXCLUDE> <EXCLUDE>/cgi-bin/*</EXCLUDE> <EXCLUDE>/servlet/*</EXCLUDE> </POLICY-REF> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#second"> <INCLUDE>/catalog/*</INCLUDE> </POLICY-REF> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#third"> <INCLUDE>/cgi-bin/*</INCLUDE> <INCLUDE>/servlet/*</INCLUDE> <EXCLUDE>/servlet/unknown</EXCLUDE> </POLICY-REF> </POLICY-REFERENCES> </META>
Note this example also includes via EXPIRY
a relative expiry time in the
document (cf. Section 2.3.2.3.2).
This section defines the syntax and semantics of P3P policy reference files. All policy reference files MUST be encoded using [UTF-8]. P3P servers MUST encode their policy reference files using this syntax.
A policy reference file may contain multiple POLICY-REF
elements. If it does contain more than one element, they MUST be processed by
user agents in the order given in the file. When a user agent is attempting
to determine what policy applies to a given URI, it MUST use the first
POLICY-REF
element in the policy reference file which applies to
that URI.
Note that each POLICY-REF
may contain multiple
INCLUDE
, EXCLUDE
, METHOD
,
COOKIE-INCLUDE
, and COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements and
that all of these elements within a given POLICY-REF
MUST be
considered together to determine whether the POLICY-REF
applies
to a given URI. Thus, it is not sufficient to find an INCLUDE
element that matches a given URI, as EXCLUDE
or
METHOD
elements may serve as modifiers that cause the
POLICY-REF
not to match.
Policy reference files make statements about what policy applies to a
given URI. Policy reference files support a simple wildcard character to
allow making statements about regions of URI-space. The character asterisk
('*
') is used to represent a sequence of 0 or more of any
character. No other special characters (such are those found in regular
expressions) are supported.
Note that since the asterisk is also a legal character in URIs ([URI]), some special conventions have to be followed when encoding such "extended URIs" in a policy reference file:
*
's in URIs MUST be escaped in policy
reference files (i.e., they MUST be represented as
"%2A
"). Any '*
' present in a URI within a
policy reference file will be taken as representing the asterisk
wildcard character.*
' present as the
asterisk wildcard character.URI escaping and unescaping is very much dependant on the actual scheme used, and might even differ between individual components within a single scheme, so no simple rule for which characters need to be escaped can be given here. Please refer directly to [URI] for details on the standard escaping process. Note that P3P user agents MAY ignore any URI pattern that does not conform to [URI].
The wildcard character MAY be used in the INCLUDE
and
EXCLUDE
elements, in the COOKIE-INCLUDE
and
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements, and in the HINT
element.
META
and
POLICY-REFERENCES
elements<META>
META
element contains a complete policy reference
file. Optionally, one POLICIES
element can follow.
META
can also contain one or more one or more EXTENSION
elements (cf. section 3.5), as well as an xml:lang
attribute (see section 2.4.2), to indicate the
language in which its content is expressed.<POLICY-REFERENCES
>POLICY-REF
(policy
reference) elements. It MAY also contain one EXPIRY
element (indicating
their expiration time), one or more HINT
element, and one or more EXTENSION
element (cf. section 3.5).[6] | prf |
= |
`<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"` [xml-lang] `>` *extension policyrefs [policies] *extension "</META>" |
[7] | policyrefs |
= |
"<POLICY-REFERENCES>" [expiry] *policyref *hint *extension "</POLICY-REFERENCES>" |
Here PCDATA is defined in [XML]. |
EXPIRY
elementIt is desirable for servers to inform user agents about how long they can use the claims made in a policy reference file. By enabling clients to cache the contents of a policy reference file, it reduces the time required to process the privacy policy associated with a Web resource. This also reduces load on the network. In addition, clients that don't have a valid policy reference file for a URI will need to use "safe zone" practices for their requests. If clients have policy reference files that they know are still valid, then they can make more informed decisions on how to proceed.
In order to achieve these benefits, policy reference files SHOULD contain
an EXPIRY
element, which indicates the lifetime of the policy
reference file. If the policy reference file does not contain an
EXPIRY
element, then it defaults to 24-hour lifetime.
The lifetime of a policy reference file tells user agents how long they can rely on the claims made in the policy reference file. By setting the lifetime of a policy reference file, the publishing site agrees that the policies mentioned in the policy reference file are appropriate for the lifetime of the policy reference file. For example, if a policy reference file has a lifetime of 3 days, then a user agent need not reload that file for 3 days, and can assume that the references made in that policy reference file are good for 3 days. All of the policy references made in a single policy reference file will receive the same lifetime. The only way to specify different lifetimes for different policy references is to use separate policy reference files.
The same mechanism used to indicate the lifetime of a policy reference
file is also used to indicate the lifetime of a P3P policy. Thus P3P
POLICIES
elements SHOULD have an EXPIRY
element
associated with them as well. This lifetime applies to all P3P policies
contained within that POLICIES
element. If there is no
EXPIRY
element associated with a P3P policy, then it defaults to
24-hour lifetime.
When picking a lifetime for policies and policy reference files, sites need to pick a lifetime which balances two competing concerns. One concern is that the lifetime ought to be long enough to allow user agents to receive significant benefits from caching. The other concern is that the site would like to be able to change their policy for new data collection without waiting for an extremely long lifetime to expire. It is expected that lifetimes in the range of 1-7 days would be a reasonable balance between these two competing desires. Sites also need to remember the policy update requirements when updating their policies.
When a policy reference file has expired, the information in the policy reference file MUST NOT be used by a user agent until that user agent has successfully revalidated the policy reference file, or has fetched a new copy of the policy reference file.
Note that while user agents are not obligated to revalidate policy reference files or policy files that have not expired, they MAY choose to revalidate those files before their expiry period has passed in order to reduce the need for using "safe zone" practices. A valid P3P user agent implementation does not need to contain a cache for policies and policy reference files, though the implementation will have better performance if it does.
EXPIRY
elementThe EXPIRY
element can be used in a policy reference file
and/or in a POLICIES
element to state how long the policy
reference file (or policies) remains valid. The
expiry is given as either an absolute expiry time, or a relative expiry time.
An absolute expiry time is a time, given in GMT, until which the policy
reference file (or policies) is valid. A relative
expiry time gives a number of seconds for which the policy reference file (or
policies) is valid. This expiry time is relative to
the time the policy reference file (or policies) was
requested or last revalidated by the client. This computation MUST be done
using the time of the original request or revalidation, and the current time,
with both times generated from the client's clock. Revalidation is defined in
section 13.3 of [HTTP1.1].
The minimum amount of time for any relative expiry time is 24 hours, or 86400 seconds. Any relative expiration time shorter than 86400 seconds MUST be treated as being equal to 86400 seconds in a client implementation. If a client encounters an absolute expiration time that is in the past, it MUST act as if NO policy reference file (or policy) is available. See section 2.4.7 "Absence of Policy Reference File" for the required procedure in such cases.
[8] | expiry |
= |
"<EXPIRY" (absdate|reldate) "/>" |
[9] | absdate |
= |
`date="` HTTP-date `"` |
[10] | reldate |
= |
`max-age="` delta-seconds `"` |
Here, HTTP-date is defined in section 3.3.1 of [HTTP1.1], and delta-seconds is defined in section 3.3.2 of [HTTP1.1]. |
In a real-world network, there may be caches which will cache the contents of policies and policy reference files. This is good for increasing the overall network performance, but may have deleterious effects on the operation of P3P if not used correctly. There are two specific concerns:
HTTP 1.1 [HTTP1.1] contains powerful cache-control mechanisms to allow clients to place requirements on the operations of network caches; these mechanisms can resolve the problems mentioned above. The specific method will be discussed below.
HTTP 1.0, however, does not provide those more sophisticated cache control
mechanisms. An HTTP 1.0 caching proxy will, in all likelihood, compute a
cache lifetime for the policy reference file (or policies) based on the
file's last-modified date; the resulting cache lifetime could be
significantly longer than the lifetime specified by the EXPIRY
element. The caching proxy could then serve the policy reference file (or
policies) to clients beyond the lifetime in the EXPIRY
; the
result would be that user-agents would receive a useless policy reference
file (or policies).
The second problem with an HTTP 1.0 caching proxy is that a user agent has no way to know how long the reference file may have been stored by the caching proxy. If the policy reference file (or policies) relies on relative expiry, it would then be impossible for the user agent to determine if the reference file's lifetime has already expired, or when it will expire.
Thus, if a user agent is requesting a policy reference file or a policy, and does not know for certain that there are no HTTP 1.0 caches in the path to the origin server, then the request MUST force an end-to-end revalidation. This can be done with the Pragma: no-cache HTTP request-header. Note that neither HTTP nor P3P define a way to determine if there is a HTTP 1.0-compliant cache in any given network path, so unless the user agent has this information derived from an outside source, it MUST force the end-to-end revalidation.
If the user agent has some way to know that all caches in the network path to the origin server are compliant with HTTP 1.1 (or that there are no caches in the network path to the origin server), then the client MAY do the following instead of forcing an end-to-end revalidation:
Note that it is impossible for a client to accurately predict the amount of latency that may affect an HTTP request. Thus, if the policy reference file covering a request is going to expire soon, clients MAY wish to consider warning their users and/or revalidating the policy reference file before continuing with the request.
The following situations have their semantics specifically defined:
EXPIRY
element, the first one takes precedence for determining the lifetime of
the policy reference file.POLICY-REF
elementA policy reference file may refer to multiple P3P policies, specifying
information about each. The POLICY-REF
element describes
attributes of a single P3P policy. Elements within the
POLICY-REF
element give the location of the policy and specify
the areas of URI-space (and cookies) that each policy covers.
POLICY-REF
about
(mandatory
attribute)name
attribute), and the URI part denotes the URI where
the policy resides. If this is a relative URI reference, it is
interpreted relative to the URI of the policy reference file.[11] | policy-ref |
= |
`<POLICY-REF about="` URI-reference `">` *include *exclude *cookie-include *cookie-exclude *method-element *extension `</POLICY-REF>` |
Here, URI-reference is defined as per RFC 2396 [URI]. |
INCLUDE
and
EXCLUDE
elementsEach INCLUDE
or EXCLUDE
element specifies one
local URI or set of local URIs. A set of URIs is specified if the wildcard character '*' is used in the
URI-pattern. These elements are used to specify the portion of the Web site
that is covered by the policy referenced by the enclosing
POLICY-REF
element.
When INCLUDE
(and optionally, EXCLUDE
) elements
are present in a POLICY-REF
element, it means that the policy
specified in the about
attribute of the POLICY-REF
element applies to all the URIs at the requested host corresponding to the
local-URI(s) matched by any of the INCLUDE
s, but not matched by
an EXCLUDE
element.
A policy referenced in a policy reference file can be applied only to URIs
on the DNS (Domain Name System) host that reference it. Thus, for example, a
policy reference file at the well-known location of host www.example.com can
apply policies only to resources on www.example.com. However, if
foo.example.com includes a P3P HTTP header in its responses that references a
policy reference file on bar.example.com, that policy reference file would be
applied to resources on foo.example.com (not bar.example.com or
www.example.com). The same policy reference file might be referenced in P3P
HTTP headers sent by multiple hosts, in which case it may be applied to each
host that references it. The INCLUDE
and EXCLUDE
elements MUST specify URI patterns relative to the root of the DNS host to
which they are applied. This requirement does NOT apply to the location of
the P3P policy file (the about attribute on the POLICY-REF
element).
If a METHOD
element (section
2.3.2.8) specifies one or more methods for an enclosing policy reference,
it follows that all methods not mentioned are consequently
not covered by this policy. In the case that this is the only policy
reference for a given URI prefix, user agents MUST assume that NO policy is
in effect for all methods NOT mentioned in the policy reference file. It is
legal but pointless to supply a METHOD
element without any
INCLUDE
or COOKIE-INCLUDE
elements.
It is legal, but pointless, to supply an EXCLUDE
element
without any INCLUDE
elements; in that case, the
EXCLUDE
element MUST be ignored by user agents.
Note that the set of URIs specified with INCLUDE
and
EXCLUDE
does not include cookies that might be set or replayed
when requesting one of such URIs: in order to associate policies with
cookies, the COOKIE-INCLUDE
and
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements are needed.
[12] | include |
= |
"<INCLUDE>" relativeURI "</INCLUDE>" |
[13] | exclude |
= |
"<EXCLUDE>" relativeURI "</EXCLUDE>" |
Here, relativeURI is defined as per RFC 2396 [URI], with the addition that the '* '
character is to be treated as a wildcard, as defined in section 2.3.2.1.2. |
HINT
elementPolicy reference hints are a performance optimization that can be used
under certain conditions. A site may declare a policy reference for itself
using the well-known location, the P3P response header, or the HTML/XHTML
link
tag. It MAY further provide a hint to additional policy
references, such as those declared by other sites.
For example, an HTML page might hint at policy references for its hyperlinks, embedded content, and action URIs. User agents MAY use the hint mechanism to discover policy reference files before requesting the affected URIs when the policy references are not available from the well-known location.
User agents which use hints to retrieve policies MUST NOT apply them to any site other than the one which contains the hinted policy reference file.
Any policy reference file MAY contain zero or more policy reference hints.
Each hint is contained in a HINT
element with two attributes,
scope
and path
.
The scope
attribute is used to specify a URI scheme and
authority to which the hinted policy reference can be applied. If the
authority component (cf. [URI]) is a server component
(e.g., a hostname or IP address) the host part of the authority MAY begin
with a wildcard, as defined in Section
2.3.2.1.2. The scope
attribute MUST NOT contain a wildcard in
any other position, MUST be encoded according to the conventions in Section
2.3.2.1.2, and MUST NOT contain a path, query or fragment URI component.
Additionally, if the authority is a server, it SHOULD NOT contain a userinfo
part.
For example, legal values for scope
include:
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com:81
http://*.example.com
ftp://ftp.example.org
The following are illegal values for the scope
attribute:
http://www.*.com
; the wildcard can only be at the
starthttp://www.example.com/
; the trailing slash is not
allowedwww.example.com
; the scheme must be stated*://www.example.com
; the scheme cannot contain a
wildcardhttp://www.example.com:*
; the port cannot contain a
wildcardThe path
attribute is used to locate the policy reference
file on the hinted site. It is a relative URI whose base is the URI scheme
and authority matched in the scope
attribute. The
path
attribute MUST NOT be an absolute URI, so that the policy
reference file is always retrieved from the same site that it is applied
to.
Example 2.3:
<HINT scope="http://www.example.org" path="/mypolicy/p3.xml" /> <HINT scope="http://www.example.net:81" path="/w3c/prf.xml" /> <HINT scope="http://*.shop.example.com" path="/w3c/prf.xml" />
[14] | hint |
= |
`<HINT scope="` scheme ( `://` | `:/` ) authority `" path="` relativeURI `/>` |
Here, scheme , authority and
relativeURI are taken from RFC 2965 [STATE]. |
COOKIE-INCLUDE
and
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elementsThe COOKIE-INCLUDE
and COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements
are used to associate policies to cookies (cf. [COOKIES] and [STATE]).
A cookie policy MUST cover any data (within the scope of P3P) that is
stored in that cookie or linked via that cookie. It MUST also reference all
purposes associated with data stored in that cookie or enabled by that
cookie. In addition, any data/purpose stored or linked via a cookie MUST also
be put in the cookie policy. In addition, if that linked data is collected by
HTTP, then the policy that covers that
GET
/POST
/whatever request must cover that data
collection. For example, when CatalogExample asks customers to fill out a
form with their name, billing, and shipping information, the P3P policy that
covers the form submittal will disclose that CatalogExample collects this
data and explain how it is used. If CatalogExample sets a cookie so that it
can recognize its customers and observe their behavior on its web site, it
would have a separate policy for this cookie. However, if this cookie is also
linked to the user's name, billing, and shipping information -- perhaps so
CatalogExample can generate custom catalog pages based on where the customer
lives -- then that data must also be disclosed in the cookie policy.
For the purpose of this specification, state management mechanisms use
either SET-COOKIE
or SET-COOKIE2
headers, and
cookie-namespace is defined as the value of the NAME, VALUE, Domain and Path
attributes, specified in [COOKIES] and [STATE].
Each COOKIE-INCLUDE
or COOKIE-EXCLUDE
element
can be used to match (similarly to INCLUDE
and
EXCLUDE
) the NAME, VALUE, Domain and Path components of a
cookie, expressing the cookies which are covered by the policy specified by
the about
attribute when the cookies are set from the resources
on the Web site where the policy reference file resides:
COOKIE-INCLUDE
(resp.
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
)name
,
value
, domain
and path
attributesname
value
domain
path
If the value of the domain
attribute is set to the dot
character (".
"), the domain will match only cookies that omit
the domain
attribute (and thus have domain equivalent to the
request host as per RFC
2965 ([STATE]).
Cookies that omit the path attribute have the default path of the request
URI that generated the set-cookie response as per RFC 2965 [STATE]. The path
attribute of a
COOKIE-INCLUDE
should be matched against this default value if a
cookie omits the path
attribute.
All four attributes are optional. If an attribute is absent, the
COOKIE-INCLUDE
(resp. COOKIE-EXCLUDE
) will match
cookies that have that attribute set to any value.
When COOKIE-INCLUDE
(and optionally,
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
) elements are present in a
POLICY-REF
element, the policy specified in the
about
attribute of the POLICY-REF
element applies
to every cookie that is matched by any COOKIE-INCLUDE
's, and
not matched by a COOKIE-EXCLUDE
element.
User agents MUST interpret COOKIE-INCLUDE
and
COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements in a policy reference file to determine
the policy that applies to cookies set by or replayed to the host to which
the policy reference file applies. While the domain attribute of a
COOKIE-INCLUDE
may match more broadly (for example, if the
domain attribute is omitted it defaults to matching any domain value), user
agents MUST limit their application of the policy to domains that could be
legally used in a cookie set by the host to which the policy reference file
applies. For example, if abc.xyz.example.com declares a policyref with
<COOKIE-INCLUDE domain="*.xyz.*ple.com"/>
, this would be
matched to cookies with domains such as .abc.xyz.example.com and
.xyz.example.com, but not .example.com or .xyz.sample.com.
A P3P policy can be associated with a cookie by the host that set that
cookie as well as by any or all of the hosts to which it might be replayed. A
user agent MAY fetch a cookie policy at the time a cookie is set and apply it
later when the cookie is replayed, perhaps to other hosts in the domain. A
user agent MAY request a policy reference file from a host before replaying a
cookie to that host, and if the policy reference file contains an appropriate
COOKIE-INCLUDE
, a policy will be applied to that cookie even if
the cookie was not set by that host. Any host to which the cookie may be
replayed MUST be able to honor all the policies associated with the cookie,
regardless of whether that host declares a policy for that cookie. Thus sites
that set cookies that may be replayed to multiple hosts within a domain need
to coordinate to make sure all the hosts can follow the declared policy. In
addition, sites should be cautious with their use of wildcards to make sure
that they do not inadvertently apply a policy to cookies to which it should
not be applied (including previously set cookies that are still in use and
cookies set by other hosts in the domain).
The policy that applies to a cookie applies until the policy expires, even if the associated policy reference file expires prior to policy expiry (but after the cookie was set). If the policy associated with a cookie has expired, then the user agent SHOULD reevaluate the cookie policy before sending the cookie. In addition, user agents MUST use only non-expired policies and policy reference files when evaluating new set-cookie events.
Example 2.4 states that /P3P/Policies.xml#first
applies to
all cookies.
Example 2.4:
<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY-REFERENCES> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#first"> <COOKIE-INCLUDE name="*" value="*" domain="*" path="*"/> </POLICY-REF> </POLICY-REFERENCES> </META>
Example 2.5 states that /P3P/Policies.xml#first
applies to
all cookies, except cookies with the cookie name value of
"obnoxious-cookie
", a domain value of
".example.com
", and a path value of "/
", and that
/P3P/Policies.xml#second
applies to all cookies with the cookie
name of "obnoxious-cookie
", a domain value of
".example.com
", and a path value of "/
".
Example 2.5:
<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY-REFERENCES> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#first"> <COOKIE-INCLUDE name="*" value="*" domain="*" path="*"/> <COOKIE-EXCLUDE name="obnoxious-cookie" value="*" domain=".example.com" path="/"/> </POLICY-REF> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#second"> <COOKIE-INCLUDE name="obnoxious-cookie" value="*" domain=".example.com" path="/"/> </POLICY-REF> </POLICY-REFERENCES> </META>
[15] | cookie-include |
= |
"<COOKIE-INCLUDE" [` name="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's NAME [` value="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's VALUE [` domain="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's Domain [` path="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's Path "/>" |
[16] | cookie-exclude |
= |
"<COOKIE-EXCLUDE" [` name="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's NAME [` value="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's VALUE [` domain="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's Domain [` path="` token `"`] ; matches the cookie's Path "/>" |
Here, token , NAME ,
VALUE , Domain and Path are
defined as per RFC
2965 [STATE], with the addition that the
'* ' character is to be treated as a wildcard, as defined
in section 2.3.2.1.2. |
Note that [STATE] states default values for the
domain and path attributes of cookies: these should be used in the comparison
if those attributes are not found in a specific cookie. Also, conforming to
[STATE], if an explicitly specified
Domain
value does not start with a full stop (".
"),
the user agent MUST prepend a full stop for it; and, note that every
Path
begins with the "/
" character.
METHOD
elementBy default, a policy reference applies to the stated URIs regardless of
the method used to access the resource. However, a Web site may wish to
define different P3P policies depending on the method to be applied to a
resource. For example, a site may wish to collect more data from users when
they are performing PUT
or DELETE
methods than when
performing GET
methods.
The METHOD
element in a policy reference file is used to
state that the enclosing policy reference only applies when the specified
methods are used to access the referenced resources. The METHOD
element may be repeated to indicate multiple applicable methods. If the
METHOD
element is not present in a POLICY-REF
element, then that POLICY-REF
element covers the resources
indicated regardless of the method used to access them.
So, to state that /P3P/Policies.xml#first
applies to all
resources whose paths begin with /docs/
for GET
and
HEAD
methods, while /P3P/Policies.xml#second
applies for PUT
and DELETE
methods, the following
policy reference would be written:
Example 2.6:
<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY-REFERENCES> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#first"> <INCLUDE>/docs/*</INCLUDE> <METHOD>GET</METHOD> <METHOD>HEAD</METHOD> </POLICY-REF> <POLICY-REF about="/P3P/Policies.xml#second"> <INCLUDE>/docs/*</INCLUDE> <METHOD>PUT</METHOD> <METHOD>DELETE</METHOD> </POLICY-REF> </POLICY-REFERENCES> </META>
Note that HTTP requires the same behavior for GET
and
HEAD
requests, thus it is inappropriate to specify different P3P
policies for these methods. The syntax for the METHOD
element
is:
[17] | method-element |
= |
`<METHOD>` Method `</METHOD>` |
Here, Method is defined in the section
5.1.1 of [HTTP1.1]. |
Finally, note that the METHOD
element is designed to be used
in conjunction with INCLUDE
or COOKIE-INCLUDE
elements. A METHOD
element by itself will never apply a
POLICY-REF
to a URI.
A policy reference file specifies the policy which applies to a given URI.
In other words, the indicated policy describes all effects of dereferencing
the given URI (in some cases, with the appropriately specified
METHOD
).
There is a general rule which describes what it means for a P3P policy to
cover a URI: the referenced policy MUST cover actions that the user's
client software is expected to perform as a result of requesting that
URI. Obviously, the policy must describe all data collection performed by
site as a result of processing the request for the URI. Thus, if a given URI
is covered for terms of GET
requests, then the policy given by
the policy reference file MUST describe all data collection performed by the
site when that URI is dereferenced. Likewise, if a URI is covered for
POST
requests, then any data collection that occurs as a result
of POSTing a form or other content to that URI MUST be described by the
policy.
The concept of "actions that the client software is expected to perform" includes the setting of client-side cookies or other state-management mechanisms invoked by the response. If executable code is returned when a URI is requested, then the P3P policy covering that URI MUST cover certain actions which will occur when that code is executed. The covered actions are any actions which could take place without the user explicitly invoking them. If explicit user action causes data to be collected, then the P3P policy covering the URI for that action would disclose that data collection.
Some specific examples:
Forms deserve special consideration, as they often link to CGI scripts or
other server-side applications in their action URIs (the action URI
is the URI given in the action attribute of the HTML
<FORM>
element, as defined in section 17.3 of [HTML]). It is often the case that those action URIs are
covered by a different policy than the form itself.
If a user agent is unable to find a matching include-rule for a given
action URI in the policy reference file that was referenced from the page, it
SHOULD assume that no policy is in effect. Under these
circumstances, user agents SHOULD check the well-known location on the host of the action
URI to attempt to find a policy reference file that covers the action URI. If
this does not provide a P3P policy to cover the action URI, then a user agent
MAY try to retrieve the policy reference file by using the HINT
mechanism on the action URI, and/or by
issuing a HEAD
request to the action URI before actually
submitting any data in order to find the policy in effect. Services SHOULD
ensure that server-side applications can properly respond to such
HEAD
requests and return the corresponding policy reference link
in the headers. In case the underlying application does not understand the
HEAD
request and no policy has been predeclared for the
action URI in question, user agents MUST assume that no policy is in
effect and SHOULD inform the user about this or take the corresponding
actions according to the user's preferences.
Note that services might want to make use of the
<METHOD>
element in order to declare policies for
server-side applications that only cover a subset of supported methods, e.g.,
POST
or GET
. Under such circumstances, it is
acceptable that the application in question only supports the methods given
in the policy reference file (e.g., PUT
requests need not be
supported). User agents SHOULD NOT attempt to issue a HEAD
request to an action URI if the relevant methods specified in the form's
method
attribute have been properly predeclared in the page's
policy reference file.
In some cases, different data is collected at the same
action URI depending on some selection in the form. For example, a search
service might offer to both search for people (by name and/or email) and
(arbitrary) images. Using a set of radio buttons on the form, a single
server-side application located at one and the same action URI handles both
cases and collects the required information necessary for the search. If a
service wants to predeclare the data collection practices of the server-side
application it MAY declare all of the data collection practices in a
single policy file (using a <INCLUDE>
declaration
matching the action URI). In this case, user agents MUST assume that all data
elements are collected under every circumstance. This solution offers the
convenience of a single policy but might not properly reflect the fact that
only parts of the listed data elements are collected at a time. Services
SHOULD make sure that a simple HEAD
request to the action URI
(i.e., without any arguments, especially without the value of the selected
radio button) will return a policy that covers all cases.
Note that if a form is handled through use of the GET
method,
then the action URI reflects the choice of form elements selected by the
user. In some cases, it will be possible to make use of the wildcard syntax
allowed in policy reference files to specify different policies for different
uses of the same form action-handler URI. Therefore, user agents MUST include
the query-string portion of URIs when making comparisons with
INCLUDE
and EXCLUDE
elements in policy reference
files.
User agents need to be able to determine unambiguously what policy applies to a given URI. Therefore, sites SHOULD avoid declaring more than one non-expired policy for a given URI. In some rare case sites MAY declare more than one non-expired policy for a given URI, for example, during a transition period when the site is changing its policy. In those cases, the site will probably not be able to determine reliably which policy any given user has seen, and thus it MUST honor all policies (this is also the case for compact policies, cf. Section 4.1 and Section 4.6). Sites MUST be cautious in their practices when they declare multiple policies for a given URI, and ensure that they can actually honor all policies simultaneously.
If a policy reference file at the well-known location declares a non-expired policy for a given URI, this policy applies, regardless of any conflicting policy reference files referenced through HTTP headers or HTML/XHTML link tags.
If an HTTP response header includes references to more than one policy reference file, P3P user agents MUST ignore all references after the first one.
If an HTML (resp. XHTML) file includes HTML (resp. XHTML)
link
tag references to more than one policy reference file, P3P
user agents MUST ignore all references after the first one.
If a user agent discovers more than one non-expired P3P policy for a given
URI (for example because a page has both a P3P header and a link
tag that reference different policy reference files, or because P3P headers
for two pages on the site reference different policy reference files that
declare different policies for the same URI), the user agent MAY assume any
(or all) of these policies apply as the site MUST honor all of them.
Multiple language versions (translations) of the same policy can be
offered by the server using the HTTP "Content-Language
" header
to properly indicate that a particular language has been used for the policy.
This is useful so that human-readable fields such as entity and consequence
can be presented in multiple languages. The same mechanism can also be used
to offer multiple language versions for data schemas. Servers SHOULD return a
localized policy in response to an HTTP request with an HTTP
"Accept-Language
" header when a policy matching the given
language preferences is available.
Whenever Content-Language
is used to distinguish policies at
the same URI that are offered in multiple languages, the policies MUST have
the same meaning in each language. Two policies (or two data schemas) are
taken to be identical if
Due to the use of the Accept-Language
mechanism, implementers
should take note that user agents may see different language versions of a
policy or policy reference file despite sending the same
Accept-Language
request header if a new language version of a
policy or data schema has been added.
Finally, language declarations can be also included directly within P3P
XML files: the POLICY
, POLICIES
, META
,
and DATASCHEMA
elements MAY take an xml:lang
attribute to indicate the language of any human-readable fields they contain
(xml:lang
is normatively defined in section 2.12 of [XML]).
[18] | xml-lang |
= |
` xml:lang="` language `"` |
Here, language is a language identifier as
defined in [LANG]. |
P3P defines a special set of "safe zone" practices, which SHOULD be used by all P3P-enabled user agents and services for the communications which take place as part of fetching a P3P policy or policy reference file. In particular, requests to the well-known location for policy reference files SHOULD be covered by these "safe zone" practices. Communications covered by the safe zone practices SHOULD have only minimal data collection, and any data that is collected is used only in non-identifiable ways.
To support this safe zone, P3P user agents SHOULD suppress the transmission of data unnecessary for the purpose of finding a site's policy until the policy has been fetched. Therefore safe-zone practices for user agents include the following requirements:
Referer
header in the
safe zoneAccept-Language
HTTP header in the
safe zone. Sending the correct Accept-Language
header will
allow fetching a P3P policy in the user's preferred natural language (if
available), but does expose a certain amount of information about the
identity of the user. User agents MAY wish to allow users to decide when
these headers should be sent.Safe-zone practices for servers include the following requirements:
Referer
header, cookies, user agent information, or other information unnecessary
for responding to requests in the safe zoneAccept-Language
HTTP
header as part of safe-zone operation, the server is free to choose any
of the available translationsNote that the safe zone requirements do not say that sites cannot keep identifiable information -- only that they SHOULD NOT use in an identifiable way any information collected while serving a policy file. Tracking down the source of a denial of service attack, for example, would be a legitimate reason to use this information.
P3P user agents MUST only render or act upon P3P policies and policy reference files that are well-formed XML.
P3P user agents SHOULD only render or act upon P3P policies and policy reference files that conform to the XML schema given in Appendix 4, and user agents SHOULD NOT rely upon any part of a policy or policy reference file that does not conform to this XML schema.
User agents MUST NOT locally modify a P3P policy or policy reference file in order to make it conform to the XML schema.
P3P policies and references to P3P policies SHOULD NOT contain any sensitive information. This means that there are no additional security requirements for transporting a reference to a P3P policy beyond the requirements of the document it is associated with; so, if an HTML document would normally be served over a non-encrypted session, then P3P does not require nor recommend that the document be served over an encrypted session when a reference to a P3P policy is included with that document.
Note that when a Web site changes its P3P policy, the old policy applies to data collected when it was in effect. It is the responsibility of the site to keep records of past P3P policies and policy reference files along with the dates when they were in effect, and to apply these policies appropriately.
If a site wishes to apply a new P3P policy to previously collected data, it MUST provide appropriate notice and opportunities for users to accept the new policy that are consistent with applicable laws, industry guidelines, or other privacy-related agreements the site has made.
If no policy reference file is available for a given site, user agents MUST assume (an empty) policy reference file exists at the well-known location with a 24 hour expiry, and therefore if the user returns to the site after 24 hours, the user agent MUST attempt to fetch a policy reference file from the well-known location again. User agents MAY check the well-known location more frequently, or upon a certain event such as the user clicking a browser refresh button. Sites MAY place a policy reference file at the well-known location that indicates that no policy is available, but set the expiry such that user agents know they need not check every 24 hours.
User agents MAY asynchronously fetch and evaluate P3P policies. That is, P3P policies need not necessarily be fetched and evaluated prior to other HTTP transactions.This behavior may be dependent on the the user's preferences and the type of request being made. Until a policy is evaluated, the user agent SHOULD treat the site as if it has no privacy policy. Once the policy has been evaluated, the user agent SHOULD apply the user's preferences. To promote deterministic behavior, the user agent SHOULD defer application of a policy until a consistent point in time. For example, a web browser might apply a user's preferences just after the user agent completes a navigation, or when confirming a form submission.
As an aid to sites deploying P3P, several example scenarios are presented, along with descriptions of how P3P is used on those sites.
Scenario 1: Web site basic.example.com uses a variety of images, all of which it hosts. It also includes some forms, which are all submitted directly to the site. This site can declare a single P3P policy for the entire site (or if different privacy policies apply to different parts of the site, it can declare multiple P3P policies). As long as all of the images and form action URIs are in directories covered by the site's P3P policy, user agents will automatically recognize the images and forms as covered by the site's policy.
Scenario 2: Web site busy.example.com uses a content
distribution network called cdn.example.com to host its images so as to
reduce the load on its servers. Thus, all of the images on the site have URIs
at cdn.example.com. CDN acts as an agent to Busy in this situation, and
collects no data other than log data. This log data is used only for Web site
and system administration in support of providing the services that Busy
contracted for. Busy's privacy policy applies to the images hosted by CDN, so
Busy uses the HINT
element in its policy reference file to point
to a suitable policy reference file at CDN, indicating that such images are
covered by example.com P3P policy.
Scenario 3: Web site busy.example.com also has a contract
with an advertising company called clickads.example.com to provide banner ads
on its site. The contract allows Clickads to set cookies so as to make sure
each user does not see a given ad more than three times. Clickads collects
statistics on how many users view each ad and reports them to the companies
whose products are being advertised. But these reports do not reveal
information about any individual users. As was the case in Scenario 2, Busy's
privacy policies applies to these ads hosted by Clickads, so Busy uses the
HINT
element in its policy reference file to point to a suitable
policy reference file at Clickads, indicating that Busy P3P policy applies to
such embedded content served by clickads.example.com. The companies whose
products are being advertised need not be mentioned in the Busy privacy
policy because the only data they are receiving is aggregate data.
Scenario 4: Web site busy.example.com also has a contract
with funchat.example.com to host a chat room for its users. When users enter
the chat room they are actually leaving the Busy site. However, the chat room
has the Busy logo and is actually covered by the Busy privacy policy. In this
instance Funchat is acting as an agent for Busy, but -- unlike the previous
examples -- their content is not embedded in the Busy site. Busy can use the
HINT
element in its policy reference file to point to a suitable
Funchat policy reference file, that indicates that Funchat chat room is
covered by Busy privacy policy, therefore facilitating a smoother transition
to the chat room.
Scenario 5: Web site bigsearch.example.com has a form
that allows users to type in a search query and have it performed on their
choice of search engines located on other sites. When a user clicks the
"submit" button, the search query is actually submitted directly to these
search engines -- the action URI is not on bigsearch.example.com but rather
on the search engine selected by the user. Bigsearch can declare the privacy
policies for these search engines by using the HINT
element to
point to their corresponding policy reference files. So when a user clicks
the "submit" button, their user agent can check its privacy policy before
posting any data. In order to make this search choice mechanism work,
Bigsearch might actually have a form with an action URI on its own site,
which redirects to the appropriate search engine. In this case, the user
agent should check the search engine privacy policy upon receiving the
redirect response.
Scenario 6: Web site bigsearch.example.com also has a form that allows users to type in a search query and have it simultaneously performed on ten different search engines. Bigsearch submits the queries, gets back the results from each search engine, removes the duplicates, and presents the results to the user. In this case, the user interacts only with Bigsearch. Thus, the only P3P policy involved is the one that covers the Bigsearch Web site. However, Bigsearch must disclose that it shares the users' search queries with third parties (the search Web sites), unless Bigsearch has a contract with these search engines and they act as agents to Bigsearch.
Scenario 7: Web site bigsearch.example.com also has
banner advertisements provided by a company called adnetwork.example.com.
Adnetwork uses cookies to develop profiles of users across many different Web
sites so that it can provide them with ads better suited to their interests.
Because the data about the sites that users are visiting is being used for
purposes other than just serving ads on the Bigsearch Web site, Adnetwork
cannot be considered an agent in this context. Adnetwork must create its own
P3P policy and use its own policy reference file to indicate what content it
applies to. In addition, Bigsearch may optionally use the HINT
element in its policy reference file to indicate that the Adnetwork P3P
policy reference file applies to these advertisements. Bigsearch should only
do this if Adnetwork has told it what P3P policy applies to these
advertisements and has agreed to notify Bigsearch if the policy reference
needs to be changed.
Scenario 8: Web site busy.example.com uses cookies
throughout its web site. It discloses a cookie policy, separate from its
regular P3P policy to cover these cookies. It uses the
COOKIE-INCLUDE
element in its policy reference file to declare
the appropriate policy for these cookies. As a performance optimization, it
also makes available a compact policy by sending a P3P header that includes
this compact policy whenever it sets a cookie.
Scenario 9: Web site config.example.com provides a
service in which they optimize various kinds of web content based on each
user's computer and Internet configuration. Users go to the Config web site
and answer questions about their computer, monitor, and Internet connection.
Config encodes the responses and stores them in a cookie. Later, when the
user is visiting Busy -- a web site that has contracted with Config --
whenever the browser requests content that can be optimized (certain images,
audio files, etc.), Busy will redirect the user to Config, which will read
the user's cookie, and deliver the appropriate content. In this case, Config
should declare a privacy policy that describes the kinds of data collected
and stored in its cookies, and how that data is used. It should use a
COOKIE-INCLUDE
element in its policy reference file to declare
the policy for the cookies. It will probably reference Busy's P3P policy for
the actual images or audio files delivered, as it is acting much like CDN
acts in scenario 2. Busy will probably also use HINT
elements in
its policy reference file to reference the policy for the Config-delivered
content.
P3P policies are encoded in XML with Namespaces (see [XML] and [XML-Name]). A possible encoding using the RDF data model ([RDF]) is provided in [P3P-RDF].
Section 3.1 begins with an example of an English language privacy policy
and a corresponding P3P policy. P3P policies include general assertions that
apply to the entire policy as well as specific assertions -- called
statements -- that apply only to the handling of particular types of
data referred to by data references. Section 3.2 describes the
POLICY
element and policy-level assertions. Section 3.3
describes statements and data references.
The following are two examples of English-language privacy policy to be encoded as a P3P policy. Both policies are for one example company, CatalogExample, which has different policies for those browsing their site and those actually purchasing products. Example 3.1. is provided in both English and as a more formal description using P3P element and attribute names.
CatalogExample
4000 Lincoln Ave.
Birmingham, MI 48009 USA
email: catalog@example.com
Telephone 248-EXAMPLE (248-392-6753)
Data retention:
We purge every two weeks the browsing information that we collect.
Here is Example 3.1 in a more formal description, using the P3P element and attribute names [with the section of the spec that was used cited in brackets for easy reference]:
CatalogExample
4000 Lincoln Ave.
Birmingham, MI 48009 USA
email: catalog@example.com
Telephone +1 248-EXAMPLE (+1 248-392-6753)
If you choose to purchase an item we will ask you for more information
including:
Also on this page we will give you the option to choose if you would
like to receive email, telephone calls or written service from
CatalogExample or from our carefully selected marketing partners who
maintain similar privacy practices. If you would like to receive these
solicitations simply check the appropriate boxes. You can choose to
stop participating at any time simply by changing your preferences.
Changing and Updating personal information
Consumers can change all of their personal account information by going
to the preferences section of CatalogExample at
http://catalog.example.com/preferences.html. You can change your
address, telephone number, email address, password as well as your
privacy settings.
Cookies
CatalogExample uses cookies only to see if you have been an
CatalogExample customer in the past and, if so, customize services
based on your past browsing habits and purchases. We do not store any
personal data in the cookie nor do we share or sell the any of the
information with other parties or affiliates.
Data retention
We will keep the information about you and your purchases for as long
as you remain our customer. If you do not place an order from us for
one year we will remove your information from our databases.
The following pieces of [XML] capture the information as expressed in the above two examples. P3P policies are statements that are properly expressed as well-formed XML. The policy syntax will be explained in more detail in the sections that follow.
XML Encoding of Example 3.1:
<POLICIES xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY name="forBrowsers" discuri="http://www.catalog.example.com/PrivacyPracticeBrowsing.html" xml:lang="en"> <ENTITY> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#business.name">CatalogExample</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.street">4000 Lincoln Ave.</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.city">Birmingham</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.stateprov">MI</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.postalcode">48009</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.country">USA</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.online.email">catalog@example.com</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.intcode">1</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.loccode">248</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.number">3926753</DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </ENTITY> <ACCESS><nonident/></ACCESS> <DISPUTES-GROUP> <DISPUTES resolution-type="independent" service="http://www.PrivacySeal.example.org" short-description="PrivacySeal.example.org"> <IMG src="http://www.PrivacySeal.example.org/Logo.gif" alt="PrivacySeal's logo"/> <REMEDIES><correct/></REMEDIES> </DISPUTES> </DISPUTES-GROUP> <STATEMENT> <PURPOSE><admin/><develop/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <!-- Note also that the site's human-readable privacy policy MUST mention that data is purged every two weeks, or provide a link to this information. --> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#dynamic.clickstream"/> <DATA ref="#dynamic.http"/> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> </POLICY> </POLICIES>
XML Encoding of Example 3.2:
<POLICIES xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY name="forShoppers" discuri="http://www.catalog.example.com/Privacy/PrivacyPracticeShopping.html" opturi="http://catalog.example.com/preferences.html" xml:lang="en"> <ENTITY> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#business.name">CatalogExample</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.street">4000 Lincoln Ave.</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.city">Birmingham</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.stateprov">MI</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.postalcode">48009</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.country">USA</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.online.email">catalog@example.com</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.intcode">1</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.loccode">248</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.telecom.telephone.number">3926753</DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </ENTITY> <ACCESS><contact-and-other/></ACCESS> <DISPUTES-GROUP> <DISPUTES resolution-type="independent" service="http://www.PrivacySeal.example.org" short-description="PrivacySeal.example.org"> <IMG src="http://www.PrivacySeal.example.org/Logo.gif" alt="PrivacySeal's logo"/> <REMEDIES><correct/></REMEDIES> </DISPUTES> </DISPUTES-GROUP> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> We record some information in order to serve your request and to secure and improve our Web site. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE><admin/><develop/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#dynamic.clickstream"/> <DATA ref="#dynamic.http.useragent"/> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> We use this information when you make a purchase. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE><current/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#user.name"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.postal"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.telecom.telephone"/> <DATA ref="#user.business-info.postal"/> <DATA ref="#user.business-info.telecom.telephone"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.online.email"/> <DATA ref="#user.login.id"/> <DATA ref="#user.login.password"/> <DATA ref="#dynamic.miscdata"> <CATEGORIES><purchase/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> At your request, we will send you carefully selected marketing solicitations that we think you will be interested in. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE> <contact required="opt-in"/> <individual-decision required="opt-in"/> <tailoring required="opt-in"/> </PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/><same required="opt-in"/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#user.name" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.postal" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.telecom.telephone" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.business-info.postal" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.business-info.telecom.telephone" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.online.email" optional="yes"/> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> We allow you to set a password so that you can access your own information. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE><individual-decision required="opt-in"/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#dynamic.miscdata"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> At your request, we will tailor our site and highlight products related to your interests. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE> <pseudo-decision required="opt-in"/> <tailoring required="opt-in"/> </PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#user.bdate.ymd.year" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.gender" optional="yes"/> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <CONSEQUENCE> We tailor our site based on your past visits. </CONSEQUENCE> <PURPOSE><tailoring/><develop/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#dynamic.cookies"> <CATEGORIES><state/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> <DATA ref="#dynamic.miscdata"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> </POLICY> </POLICIES>
This section defines the syntax and semantics of P3P policies. All policies MUST be encoded using [UTF-8].
In cases where the P3P vocabulary is not precise enough to describe a web
site's practises, sites should use the vocabulary terms that most closely
match their practices and provide further explanation in the
CONSEQUENCE
field and/or their human-readable policy. However,
policies MUST NOT make false or misleading statements.
Policies have to be placed inside a POLICIES
element.
POLICIES
elementThe POLICIES
element is used to gather several P3P policies
together in a single file. This is provided as a performance optimization:
many policies can be collected with a single request, improving network
traffic and caching. Further, the POLICIES
element can be put
within the policy reference file, inside the META
element:: in
this case, user agents need only fetch a single file, containing both the
policy reference file and the policies.
The POLICIES
element can optionally contain an
xml:lang
attribute (see section 2.4.2),
an EXPIRY
element, indicating
the expiration of the included policies, and an embedded data schema using
the DATASCHEMA
element (see Section 5).
Since policies are included in a POLICIES
element, each MUST
have a name
attribute which is unique in the file. This allows
policy references (in POLICY-REF
elements) to link to that
policy.
Example 3.3:
The file in http://www.example.com/Shop/policies.xml
could
have the following content:
<POLICIES xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY name="policy1" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc1"> .... </POLICY> <POLICY name="policy2" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc2"> .... </POLICY> <POLICY name="policy3" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc3"> .... </POLICY> </POLICIES>
The files in http://www.example.com/Shop/CDs/*
could then be
associated to the second policy ("policy2
") using the following
policy reference file in http://www.example.com/w3c/p3p.xml
:
<META xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <POLICY-REFERENCES> <POLICY-REF about="/Shop/policies#policy2"> <INCLUDE>/Shops/CDs/*</INCLUDE> </POLICY-REF> </POLICY-REFERENCES> </META>
[19] | policies |
= |
`<POLICIES xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"` [xml-lang] `>` [expiry] [dataschema] *policy "</POLICIES>" |
POLICY
elementThe POLICY
element contains a complete P3P policy. Each P3P
policy MUST contain exactly one POLICY
element. The policy
element MUST contain an ENTITY
element that identifies the legal
entity making the representation of the privacy practices contained in the
policy. In addition, the policy element MUST contain an ACCESS
element, one or more STATEMENT
elements, a
DISPUTES-GROUP
element, a P3P data
schema, and one or more extensions.
<POLICY>
name
(mandatory
attribute)discuri
(mandatory
attribute)opturi
purpose
with required
attribute set to opt-in
or opt-out
. Note that
the opt-in or opt-out procedures are determined by each site and may
not necessarily include a central mechanism for the entire site or an
automated online mechanism.xml:lang
[20] | policy |
= |
`<POLICY name=` quotedstring ` discuri=` quoted-URI [` opturi=` quoted-URI] [xml-lang] `>` *extension [test] entity access [disputes-group] 1*statement-block *extension `</POLICY>` |
[21] | quoted-URI |
= |
`"` URI `"` |
Here, URI is defined as per RFC 2396 [URI]. |
TEST
elementThe TEST element is use for testing purposes: the presence of
TEST
in a policy indicates that the policy is just an example,
and as such, it MUST be ignored, and not be considered as a valid P3P
policy.
[22] | test |
= |
"<TEST/>" |
ENTITY
elementThe ENTITY
element gives a precise description of the legal
entity making the representation of the privacy practices.
<ENTITY>
The ENTITY
element contains a description of the legal entity
consisting of DATA elements referencing (all or some of)
the fields of the business dataset: it MUST
contain both the legal entity's name and one or more contact information
fields among postal address, telephone number, email address, URI. Note that
some laws and codes of conduct require entities to include a postal address
or other specific information in their contact information.
[23] | entity |
= |
"<ENTITY>" *extension entitydescription *extension "</ENTITY>" |
[24] | entitydescription |
= |
"<DATA-GROUP>" `<DATA ref="#business.name"/>` PCDATA "</DATA>" *(`<DATA ref="#business.` string `"/>` PCDATA "</DATA>") "</DATA-GROUP>" |
Here, string is defined as a
sequence of characters (with " and & escaped) among the values
that are allowed by the business
dataset. PCDATA is defined as in [XML]. |
ACCESS
elementThe ACCESS
element indicates whether the site provides access
to various kinds of information.
<ACCESS>
<all/>
) is
not meant to imply that access to all data is possible, but that some
of the data may be accessible and that the user should communicate
further with the service provider to determine what capabilities they
have.
Note that service providers may also wish to provide capabilities to access information collected through means other than the Web at the discuri. However, the scope of P3P statements are limited to data collected through HTTP or other Web transport protocols. Also, if access is provided through the Web, use of strong authentication and security mechanisms for such access is recommended; however, security issues are outside the scope of this document.
The ACCESS
element must contain one of the following
elements:
<nonident/>
<all/>
<contact-and-other/>
<ident-contact/>
<other-ident/>
<none/>
[25] | access |
= |
"<ACCESS>" *extension access_disclosure *extension "</ACCESS>" |
[26] | access_disclosure |
= |
"<nonident/>" | ; Identified Data is Not Used |
DISPUTES
elementA policy SHOULD contain a DISPUTES-GROUP
element, which
contains one or more DISPUTES
elements. These elements describe
dispute resolution procedures that may be followed for disputes about a
services' privacy practices. Each DISPUTES
element can
optionally contain a LONG-DESCRIPTION
element, an
IMG
element, and a REMEDIES
element. Service
providers with multiple dispute resolution procedures should use a separate
DISPUTES
element for each. Since different dispute procedures
have separate remedy processes, each DISPUTES
element would need
a separate LONG-DESCRIPTION
, IMG
tag and
REMEDIES
element, if they are being used.
<DISPUTES>
resolution-type
(mandatory
attribute)[service]
[independent]
[court]
[law]
service
(mandatory
attribute)verification
short-description
The DISPUTES
element can contain a
LONG-DESCRIPTION
element, where a human readable description is
present: this should contain the name of the appropriate legal forum,
applicable law, or third party organization; or contact information for
customer service if not already provided at the service URI.
<LONG-DESCRIPTION>
<IMG>
src
(mandatory
attribute)width
height
alt
(mandatory attribute)[27] | disputes-group |
= |
"<DISPUTES-GROUP>" *extension 1*dispute *extension "</DISPUTES-GROUP>" |
[28] | dispute |
= |
"<DISPUTES" " resolution-type=" '"'("service"|"independent"|"court"|"law")'"' " service=" quoted-URI [" verification=" quotedstring] [" short-description=" quotedstring] ">" *extension [longdescription] [image] [remedies] *extension "</DISPUTES>" |
[29] | longdescription |
= |
<LONG-DESCRIPTION> PCDATA </LONG-DESCRIPTION> |
[30] | image |
= |
"<IMG src=" quoted-URI [" width=" `"` number `"`] [" height=" `"` number `"`] " alt=" quotedstring "/>" |
[31] | quotedstring |
= |
`"` string `"` |
Here, string is defined as a
sequence of characters (with " and & escaped), and
PCDATA is defined as in [XML]. |
Note that there can be multiple assurance services, specified via multiple
occurrences of DISPUTES
within the DISPUTES-GROUP
element. These fields are expected to be used in a number of ways, including
representing that one's privacy practices are self assured, audited by a
third party, or under the jurisdiction of a regulatory authority.
REMEDIES
elementEach DISPUTES
element SHOULD contain a REMEDIES
element that specifies the possible remedies in case a policy breach
occurs.
<REMEDIES>
The REMEDIES
element must contain one or more of the
following:
<correct/>
<money/>
<law/>
[32] | remedies |
= |
"<REMEDIES>" *extension 1*remedy *extension "</REMEDIES>" |
[33] | remedy |
= |
"<correct/>" | "<money/>" | "<law/>" |
Statements describe data practices that are applied to particular types of data.
STATEMENT
elementThe STATEMENT
element is a container that groups together a
PURPOSE
element, a RECIPIENT
element, a
RETENTION
element, a DATA-GROUP
element, and
optionally a CONSEQUENCE
element and one or more extensions. All
of the data referenced by the DATA-GROUP
is handled according to
the disclosures made in the other elements contained by the statement. Thus,
sites may group elements that are handled the same way and create a statement
for each group. Sites that would prefer to disclose separate purposes and
other information for each kind of data they collect can do so by creating a
separate statement for each data element.
<STATEMENT>
[34] | statement-block |
= |
"<STATEMENT>" *extension [consequence] ((purpose recipient retention 1*data-group) | (non-identifiable [purpose] [recipient] [retention] *data-group)) *extension "</STATEMENT>" |
To simplify practice declaration, service providers may aggregate any of
the disclosures (purposes, recipients, and retention) within a statement over
data elements. Service providers MUST make such aggregations as an additive
operation. For instance, a site that distributes your age to
ours
(ourselves and our agents), but distributes your postal
code to unrelated
(unrelated third parties), MAY say they
distribute your name and postal code to ours
and
unrelated
. Such a statement appears to distribute more data than
actually happens. It is up to the service provider to determine if their
disclosure deserves specificity or brevity. Note that when aggregating
disclosures across statements that include the NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element, this element may be included in the aggregated statement only if it
would otherwise appear in every statement if the statements were written
separately.
Also, one must always disclose all options that apply. Consider a site
with the sole purpose of collecting information for the purposes of
contact
(Contacting Visitors for Marketing of Services or
Products). Even though this is considered to be for the current
(Completion and Support of Activity For Which Data Was Provided) purpose, the
site must state both contact
and current
purposes.
Consider a site which distributes information to ours
in order
to redistribute it to public
: the site must state both
ours
and public
recipients.
Service providers often aggregate data they collect. Sometimes this aggregate data may be used for different purposes than the original data, shared more widely than the original data, or retained longer than the original data. For example many sites publish or disclose to their advertisers statistics such as number of visitors to their Web site, percentage of visitors who fit into various demographic groups, etc. When aggregate statistics are used or shared such that it would not be possible to derive data for individual people or households based on these statistics, no disclosures about these statistics are necessary in a P3P policy. However, services MUST disclose the fact that the original data is collected and declare any use that is made of the data before it is aggregated.
CONSEQUENCE
elementSTATEMENT
elements may optionally contain a
CONSEQUENCE
element that can be shown to a human user to provide
further explanation about a site's practices.
<CONSEQUENCE>
[35] | consequence |
= |
"<CONSEQUENCE>" PCDATA "</CONSEQUENCE>" |
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
elementA STATEMENT
element may optionally contain the
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element, signifying either that there is no
data collected under this STATEMENT
, or that all of the data
referenced by that STATEMENT
will be anonymized upon
collection.
<NON-IDENTIFIABLE/>
STATEMENT
. In order
to consider the data "anonymized", there must be no reasonable way for
the entity or a third party to attach the collected data to the
identity of a natural person. Some types of data are inherently
anonymous, such as randomly-generated session IDs. Data which might
identify natural people in some circumstances, such as IP addresses,
names, or addresses, must have a non-reversible transformation applied
in order be considered "anonymized".If the NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element is present in any
STATEMENT
elements in a policy, then a human readable
explanation of how the data is anonymized MUST be included or linked to at
the discuri .
Also, if the NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element is present in a
STATEMENT
then the other elements in that STATEMENT
are optional.
[36] | non-identifiable |
= |
"<NON-IDENTIFIABLE/>" |
PURPOSE
elementEach STATEMENT
element that does not include a
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element MUST contain a PURPOSE
element that contains one or more purposes of data collection or uses of
data. Sites MUST classify their data practices into one or more of the
purposes specified below.
<PURPOSE>
The PURPOSE
element MUST contain one or more of the
following:
<current/>
<admin/>
<develop/>
<tailoring/>
<pseudo-analysis/>
<pseudo-decision/>
<individual-analysis/>
<individual-decision/>
<contact/>
<current/>
would be
used. In addition, this does not include marketing via customized Web
content or banner advertisements embedded in sites the user is visiting
-- these cases would be covered by the
<tailoring/>
,
<pseudo-analysis/>
and
<pseudo-decision/>
, or
<individual-analysis/>
and
<individual-decision/>
purposes.<historical/>
<DISPUTES>
element and MUST include a specific
definition of the type of qualified researcher who can access the
information, where this information will be stored and specifically how
this collection advances the preservation of history.<telemarketing/>
<current/>
would be used.<other-purpose>
string
</other-purpose>
Each type of purpose (with the exception of current
) can have
the following optional attribute:
required
always
: The purpose is always
required; users cannot opt-in or opt-out of this use of their data.
This is the default when no required
attribute is
present.opt-in
: Data may be used for this
purpose only when the user affirmatively requests this use -- for
example, when a user asks to be added to a mailing list. An
affirmative request requires users to take some action specifically
to make the request. For example, when users fill out a survey,
checking an additional box to request to be added to a mailing list
would be considered an affirmative request. However, submitting a
survey form that contains a pre-checked mailing list request box
would not be considered an affirmative request. In addition, for
any purpose that users may affirmatively request, there must also
be a way for them to change their minds later and decline -- this
MUST be specified at the opturi
.opt-out
: Data may be used for this
purpose unless the user requests that it not be used in this way.
When this value is selected, the service MUST provide clear
instructions to users on how to opt-out of this purpose at the
opturi
. Services SHOULD also
provide these instructions or a pointer to these instructions at
the point of data collection.[37] | purpose |
= |
"<PURPOSE>" *extension 1*purposevalue *extension "</PURPOSE>" |
[38] | purposevalue |
= |
"<current/>" | ; Completion and Support of Activity For Which Data Was Provided "<admin" [required] "/>" | ; Web Site and System Administration "<develop" [required] "/>" | ; Research and Development "<tailoring" [required] "/>" | ; One-time Tailoring "<pseudo-analysis" [required] "/>" | ; Pseudonymous Analysis "<pseudo-decision" [required] "/>" | ; Pseudonymous Decision "<individual-analysis" [required] "/>" | ; Individual Analysis "<individual-decision" [required] "/>" | ; Individual Decision "<contact" [required] "/>" | ; Contacting Visitors for Marketing of Services or Products "<historical" [required] "/>" | ; Historical Preservation "<telemarketing" [required] "/>" | ; Telephone Marketing "<other-purpose" [required] ">" PCDATA "</other-purpose>"; Other Uses |
[39] | required |
= |
" required=" `"` ("always"|"opt-in"|"opt-out") `"` |
Service providers MUST use the above elements to explain the purpose of
data collection. Service providers MUST disclose all that apply. If
a service provider does not disclose that a data element will be used for a
given purpose, that is a representation that data will not be used for that
purpose. Service providers that disclose that they use data for
"other
" purposes MUST provide human readable explanations of
those purposes.
RECIPIENT
elementEach STATEMENT
element that does not include a
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element MUST contain a RECIPIENT
element that contains one or more recipients of the collected data. Sites
MUST classify their recipients into one or more of the six recipients
specified.
<RECIPIENT>
The RECIPIENT
element MUST contain one or more of the
following:
<ours>
<delivery>
<same>
<other-recipient>
<unrelated>
<public>
Each of the above tags can optionally contain:
recipient-description
tags, containing a
description of the recipient;<ours>
, a required
attribute: this attribute is defined
exactly as the analogous attribute in the PURPOSE
tag,
indicating whether opt-in/opt-out of sharing is available (and, its
default value is always
).[40] | recipient |
= |
"<RECIPIENT>" *extension 1*recipientvalue *extension "</RECIPIENT>" |
[41] | recipientvalue |
= |
"<ours>" *recdescr "</ours> | ; only ourselves and our agents "<same" [required] ">" *recdescr "</same>" | ; legal entities following our practices "<other-recipient" [required] ">" *recdescr "</other-recipient>" | ; legal entities following different practices "<delivery" [required] ">" *recdescr "</delivery>" | ; delivery services following different practices "<public" [required] ">" *recdescr "</public>" | ; public fora "<unrelated" [required] ">" *recdescr "</unrelated>" ; unrelated third parties |
[42] | recdescr |
= |
"<recipient-description>" PCDATA ; description of the recipient "</recipient-description>" |
Service providers MUST disclose all the recipients that apply. P3P makes no distinctions about how that data is released to the recipient; it simply requires that if data is released, then that sharing must be disclosed in the P3P policy. Examples of disclosing data which MUST be covered by a P3P statement include:
Note that in some cases the above set of recipients may not completely describe all the recipients of data. For example, the issue of transaction facilitators, such as shipping or payment processors, who are necessary for the completion and support of the activity but may follow different practices was problematic. Currently, only delivery services can be explicitly represented in a policy. Other such transaction facilitators should be represented in whichever category most accurately reflects their practices with respect to the original service provider.
A special element for delivery services is included, but not one for payment processors (such as banks or credit card companies) for the following reasons: Financial institutions will typically have separate agreements with their customers regarding the use of their financial data, while delivery recipients typically do not have an opportunity to review a delivery service's privacy policy.
Note that the <delivery/>
element SHOULD NOT be used
for delivery services that agree to use data only on behalf of the service
provider for completion of the delivery.
RETENTION
elementEach STATEMENT
element that does not include a
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element MUST contain a RETENTION
element that indicates the kind of retention policy that applies to the data
referenced in that statement.
<RETENTION>
The RETENTION
element MUST contain one of the following:
<no-retention/>
<stated-purpose/>
<legal-requirement/>
<business-practices/>
<indefinitely/>
[43] | retention |
= |
"<RETENTION>" *extension retentionvalue *extension "</RETENTION>" |
[44] | retentionvalue |
= |
"<no-retention/>" | ; not retained "<stated-purpose/>" | ; for the stated purpose "<legal-requirement/>" | ; stated purpose by law "<indefinitely/>" | ; indeterminate period of time "<business-practices/>" ; by business practices |
DATA-GROUP
and
DATA
elementsEach STATEMENT
element that does not include a
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element MUST contain at least one
DATA-GROUP
element that contains one or more DATA
elements. DATA
elements are used to describe the type of data
that a site collects.
<DATA-GROUP>
base
ref
attributes. When this attribute is omitted,
the default value is the URI of the P3P base data schema (http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base).
When the attribute appears as an empty string (""), the base is the
local document.<DATA>
ref
(mandatory attribute)DATA
element is
contained within a DATA-GROUP
element, then the default
base URI is assumed to be the URI of the base
attribute.
In the other cases, as usual, the default base URI is a same-document
reference ([URI]).user.gender
is different from USER.GENDER
or
User.Gender
).optional
optional
attribute is used only in policies
(not in data schema definitions).Note that user agents should be cautious about using the
optional
attribute in automated decision-making. If the
optional
attribute is associated with a data element directly
controlled by the user agent (such as the HTTP Referer
header or
cookies), the user agent should make sure that this data is not transmitted
to Web sites at which a data element is optional if the site's policy would
not match a user's preferences if the data element was required. Likewise,
for data elements that users typically type into forms, user agents should
alert users when a site's practices about optional data do not match their
preferences.
DATA
elements can contain the actual data (as already sen in
the case of the ENTITY
element), and can contain related category information.
[45] | data-group |
= |
"<DATA-GROUP" [" base=" quoted-URI] ">" *extension 1*dataref *extension "</DATA-GROUP>" |
[46] | dataref |
= |
`<DATA" ref="` URI-reference `"` [" optional=" `"` ("yes"|"no") `"`] ">" [categories] ; the categories of the data element. [PCDATA] ; the eventual value of the data element "</DATA>" |
Here, URI-reference is
defined as in [URI]. |
For example, to reference the user's home address city, all the elements
of the data set user.business-info
and (optionally) all the
elements of the data set user.home-info.telecom
, the service
would send the following references inside a P3P policy:
<DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.city"/> <DATA ref="#user.home-info.telecom" optional="yes"/> <DATA ref="#user.business-info"/> </DATA-GROUP>
When the actual value of the data is known, it can be expressed inside the
DATA
element. For example, as seen in the example policies:
<ENTITY> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#business.name">CatalogExample</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.postal.street">4000 Lincoln Ave.</DATA> ...
CATEGORIES
elementCategories are elements inside data elements that provide hints to users
and user agents as to the intended uses of the data. Categories are vital to
making P3P user agents easier to implement and use. Note that categories
are not data elements: they just allow users to express more generalized
preferences and rules over the exchange of their data. Categories SHOULD NOT
be used within the DATA
elements of an ENTITY
element.
The following elements are used to denote data categories:
[47] | categories |
= |
"<CATEGORIES>" 1*category "</CATEGORIES>" |
[48] | category |
= |
"<physical/>" | ; Physical Contact Information "<online/>" | ; Online Contact Information "<uniqueid/>" | ; Unique Identifiers "<purchase/>" | ; Purchase Information "<financial/>" | ; Financial Information "<computer/>" | ; Computer Information "<navigation/>" | ; Navigation and Click-stream Data "<interactive/>" | ; Interactive Data "<demographic/>" | ; Demographic and Socioeconomic Data "<content/>" | ; Content "<state/>" | ; State Management Mechanisms "<political/>" | ; Political Information "<health/>" | ; Health Information "<preference/>" | ; Preference Data "<location/>" | ; Location Data "<government/> | ; Government-issued Identifiers "<other-category>" PCDATA "</other-category>" ; Other |
<physical/>
<online/>
<uniqueid/>
<purchase/>
<financial/>
<computer/>
<navigation/>
<interactive/>
<demographic/>
<content/>
<state/>
<political/>
<health/>
<preference/>
<location/>
<government/>
<other-category>
string
</other-category>
<other-category>
and the
</other-category>
tags.)The Computer, Navigation, Interactive and Content categories can be distinguished as follows. The Computer category includes information about the user's computer including IP address and software configuration. Navigation data describes actual user behavior related to browsing. When an IP address is stored in a log file with information related to browsing activity, both the Computer category and the Navigation category should be used. Interactive Data is data actively solicited to provide some useful service at a site beyond browsing. Content is information exchanged on a site for the purposes of communication.
The Other category should be used only when data is requested that does not fit into any other category.
P3P uses categories to give users and user agents additional hints as to what type of information is requested from a service. While most data in the base data schema is in a known category (or a set of known categories), some data elements can be in a number of different categories, depending on the situation. The former are called fixed-category data elements (or "fixed data elements" for short), the latter variable-category data elements ("variable data elements"). Both types of elements are described in Section 5.7.
EXTENSION
elementP3P provides a flexible and powerful mechanism to extend its syntax and
semantics using one element: EXTENSION
. This element is used to
indicate portions of the policy/policy reference file/data schema which
belong to an extension. The meaning of the data within the
EXTENSION
element is defined by the extension itself.
<EXTENSION>
optional
optional
attribute a value of no
.
A mandatory extension to the P3P syntax means that
applications that do not understand this extension cannot understand
the meaning of the whole policy (or policy reference file, or data
schema) containing it. An optional extension, indicated by
giving the optional attribute a value of yes
, means that
applications that do not understand this extension can safely ignore
the contents of the EXTENSION
element, and proceed to
process the whole policy (or policy reference file, or data schema) as
usual. The optional
attribute is not required; its default
value is yes
.[49] | extension |
= |
"<EXTENSION" [" optional=" `"` ("yes"|"no") `"`] ">" PCDATA "</EXTENSION>" |
For example, if www.catalog.example.com would like to add to P3P a feature to indicate that a certain set of data elements were only to be collected from users living in the United States, Canada, or Mexico, it could add a mandatory extension like this:
<DATA-GROUP> ... <EXTENSION optional="no"> <COLLECTION-GEOGRAPHY type="include" xmlns="http://www.catalog.example.com/P3P/region"> <USA/><Canada/><Mexico/> </COLLECTION-GEOGRAPHY> </EXTENSION> </DATA-GROUP>
On the other hand, if www.catalog.example.com would like to add an extension stating what country the server is in, an optional extension might be more appropriate, such as the following:
<POLICY> <EXTENSION optional="yes"> <ORIGIN xmlns="http://www.catalog.example.com/P3P/origin" country="USA"/> </EXTENSION> ... </POLICY>
The xmlns
attribute is significant since it specifies the
namespace for interpreting the names of elements and attributes used in the
extension. Note that, as specified in [XML-Name], the
namespace URI is just intended to be a unique identifier for the XML entities
used by the extension. Nevertheless, service providers MAY provide a page
with a description of the extension at the corresponding URI.
The EXTENSION
element can appear in various places within P3P
syntax: such positions are normatively specified by the XML Schema present in
Appendix 4 (and, informally specified by the
ABNF syntax, and by the DTD present in Appendix 5)..
User agents MUST document a method by which preferences can be imported and processed, and SHOULD document a method by which preferences can be exported.
P3P user agents MUST act according to the preference settings selected by the user. This requires that they be able to process policy and policy reference files as appropriate to evaluate each policy with respect to a user's preferences or other criteria specified by the settings. Depending on these settings, this may require, for example, that the user agent verify that required parts of the P3P policy are present, or check that the syntax of the entire policy is valid.
Compact policies are summarized P3P policies that provide hints to user agents to enable the user agent to make quick, synchronous decisions about applying policy. Compact policies are a performance optimization that is OPTIONAL for either user agents or servers. User agents that are unable to obtain enough information from a compact policy to make a decision according to a user's preferences SHOULD fetch the full policy.
In P3Pv1, compact policies contain policy information related to cookies (cf. [COOKIES] and [STATE]) only. The web server is responsible for building a P3P compact policy to represent the cookies referenced in a full policy. The policy specified in a P3P compact policy applies to data stored within all cookies set in the same HTTP response as the compact policy, all cookies set by scripts associated with that HTTP response, and also to data linked to the cookies.
Any HTTP resource MAY include a P3P compact policy through the P3P
response header (cf. Section 2.2.2). If a site is
using P3P headers, it SHOULD include this on responses for all appropriate
request methods, including HEAD
and OPTION
requests.
The P3P compact policy header has a quoted string that may contain one or more delimited tokens (the "compact policy"). Tokens can appear in any order, and the space character (" ") is the only valid delimiter. The syntax for this header is as follows:
[50] | compact-policy-field |
= |
`CP="` compact-policy `"` |
[51] | compact-policy |
= |
compact-token *(" " compact-token) |
[52] | compact-token |
= |
compact-access | compact-disputes | compact-remedies | compact-non-identifiable | compact-purpose | compact-recipient | compact-retention | compact-categories | compact-test |
As for all HTTP headers, the name of the P3P header field is case-insensitive. The field-value (i.e., the content of the header) is instead case sensitive.
If an HTTP response includes more than one compact policy, P3P user agents MUST ignore all compact policies after the first one.
P3P compact policies use tokens representing the following elements from
the P3P vocabulary: ACCESS
, CATEGORIES
,
DISPUTES
, NON-INDENTIFIABLE
, PURPOSE
,
RECIPIENT
, REMEDIES
, RETENTION
,
TEST
.
If a token appears more than once in a single compact policy, the compact policy has the same semantics as if that token appeared only once. If an unrecognized token appears in a compact policy, the compact policy has the same semantics as if that token was not present.
The P3P compact policy vocabulary is expressed using a developer-readable language to reduce the number of bytes transferred over the wire within a HTTP response header. The syntax of the tokens follows:
ACCESS
Information in the ACCESS
element is represented in compact
policies using tokens composed by a three letter code:
[53] | compact-access |
= |
"NOI" | ; for <nonident/> "ALL" | ; for <all/> "CAO" | ; for <contact-and-other/> "IDC" | ; for <ident-contact/> "OTI" | ; for <other-ident/> "NON" ; for <none/> |
DISPUTES
If a full P3P policy contains a DISPUTES-GROUP
element that
contains one or more DISPUTES
elements, then the server should
signal the user agent by providing a single
"DSP
" token in the P3P-compact policy field:
[54] | compact-disputes |
= |
"DSP" ; there are some DISPUTES |
REMEDIES
Information in the REMEDIES
element is represented in compact
policies as follows:
[55] | compact-remedies |
= |
"COR" | ; for <correct/> "MON" | ; for <money/> "LAW" ; for <law/> |
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
The presence of the NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element in every
statement of the policy is signaled by the NID
token (note that
the NID
token MUST NOT be used unless the
NON-IDENTIFIABLE
element is present in every statement within
the policy):
[56] | compact-non-identifiable |
= |
"NID" ; for <NON-IDENTIFIABLE/> |
PURPOSE
Purposes are expressed in P3P compact policy format using tokens composed
by a three letter code plus an optional one letter attribute. Such an
optional attribute encodes the value of the "required
" attribute
in full P3P policies: its value can be "a
", "i
" and
"o
", which mean that the "required
" attribute in
the corresponding P3P policy must be set to "always
",
"opt-in
" and "opt-out
" respectively.
If a P3P compact policy needs to specify one or more other-purposes in its
full P3P policy, a single OTP
flag is used to signal the user
agent that other-purposes exist in the full P3P policy.
The corresponding associations among P3P purposes and compact policy codes follow:
[57] | compact-purpose |
= |
"CUR" | ; for <current/> "ADM" [creq] | ; for <admin/> "DEV" [creq] | ; for <develop/> "TAI" [creq] | ; for <tailoring/> "PSA" [creq] | ; for <pseudo-analysis/> "PSD" [creq] | ; for <pseudo-decision/> "IVA" [creq] | ; for <individual-analysis/> "IVD" [creq] | ; for <individual-decision/> "CON" [creq] | ; for <contact/> "HIS" [creq] | ; for <historical/> "TEL" [creq] | ; for <telemarketing/> "OTP" [creq] ; for <other-purpose/> |
[58] | creq |
= |
"a"| ;"always" "i"| ;"opt-in" "o" ;"opt-out" |
RECIPIENT
Recipients are expressed in P3P compact policy format using a three letter
code plus an optional one letter attribute. Such an optional attribute
encodes the value of the "required
" attribute in full P3P
policies: its value can be "a
", "i
" and
"o
", which mean that the "required
" attribute in
the corresponding P3P policy must be set to "always
",
"opt-in
" and "opt-out
" respectively.
The corresponding associations among P3P recipients and compact policy codes follow:
[59] | compact-recipient |
= |
"OUR" | ; for <ours/> "DEL" [creq] | ; for <delivery/> "SAM" [creq] | ; for <same/> "UNR" [creq] | ; for <unrelated/> "PUB" [creq] | ; for <public/> "OTR" [creq] ; for <other-recipient/> |
RETENTION
Information in the RETENTION
element is represented in
compact policies as follows:
[60] | compact-retention |
= |
"NOR" | ; for <no-retention/> "STP" | ; for <stated-purpose/> "LEG" | ; for <legal-requirement/> "BUS" | ; for <business-practices/> "IND" ; for <indefinitely/> |
CATEGORIES
Categories are represented in compact policies as follows:
[61] | compact-categories |
= |
"PHY" | ; for <physical/> "ONL" | ; for <online/> "UNI" | ; for <uniqueid/> "PUR" | ; for <purchase/> "FIN" | ; for <financial/> "COM" | ; for <computer/> "NAV" | ; for <navigation/> "INT" | ; for <interactive/> "DEM" | ; for <demographic/> "CNT" | ; for <content/> "STA" | ; for <state/> "POL" | ; for <political/> "HEA" | ; for <health/> "PRE" | ; for <preference/> "LOC" | ; for <location/> "GOV" | ; for <government/> "OTC" ; for <other-category/> |
Note that if a P3P policy specifies one or more
other-category
in its full P3P policy, a single
OTC
token is used to signal the user agent that
other-category
's exist in the full P3P policy.
TEST
The presence of the TEST
element is signaled by the
TST
token:
[62] | compact-test |
= |
"TST" ; for <TEST/> |
When a P3P compact policy is included in a HTTP response header, it
applies to cookies set by the current response. This includes cookies set
through the use of a HTTP SET-COOKIE
header or cookies set by
script.
To use compact policies, the validity of the full P3P policy must span the lifetime of the cookie. There is no method to indicate that policy is valid beyond the life of the cookie because the value of user agent caching is marginal, since sites would not know when to optimize by not sending the compact policy. When a server sends a compact policy, it is asserting that the compact policy and corresponding full P3P policy will be in effect for at least the lifetime of the cookie to which it applies.
When using P3P compact policies, the web site is responsible for building
a compact policy by summarizing the policy referenced by the
COOKIE-INCLUDE
elements of a P3P policy reference file. If a
site's policy reference file uses COOKIE-EXCLUDE
elements then
the site will need to manage sending the correct P3P compact policies to the
user agent given the cookies set in a specific response.
The transformation of a P3P policy to a P3P compact policy may result in a loss of descriptive policy information -- the compact policy may not contain all of the policy information specified in the full P3P policy. The information from the full policy that is discarded when building a compact policy includes expiry, data group/data-schema elements, entity elements, consequences elements, and disputes elements are reduced.
Full policies that include mandatory extensions MUST NOT be represented as compact policies.
All of the purposes, recipients, and categories that appear in multiple statements in a full policy MUST be aggregated in a compact policy, as described in section 3.3.1. When performing the aggregation, a web site MUST disclose all relevant tokens (for instance, observe Example 4.1, where multiple retention policies are specified.)
In addition, for each fixed category data element appearing in a statement the associated category as defined in the associated schema MUST be included in the compact policy.
Example 4.1:
Consider the following P3P policy:
<POLICY name="sample" discuri="http://www.example.com/cookiepolicy.html" opturi="http://www.example.com/opt.html"> <ENTITY> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#business.name">Example, Corp.</DATA> <DATA ref="#business.contact-info.online.email">privacy@example.com</DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </ENTITY> <ACCESS><none/></ACCESS> <DISPUTES-GROUP> <DISPUTES resolution-type="service" service="http://www.example.com/privacy.html" short-description="Please contact our customer service desk with privacy concerns by emailing privacy@example.com"/> </DISPUTES-GROUP> <STATEMENT> <PURPOSE><admin/><develop/><pseudo-decision/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><indefinitely/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#dynamic.cookies"> <CATEGORIES><preference/><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> <STATEMENT> <PURPOSE><individual-decision required="opt-out"/></PURPOSE> <RECIPIENT><ours/></RECIPIENT> <RETENTION><stated-purpose/></RETENTION> <DATA-GROUP> <DATA ref="#user.name.given"/> <DATA ref="#dynamic.cookies"> <CATEGORIES><preference/><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA> </DATA-GROUP> </STATEMENT> </POLICY>
The corresponding compact policy is:
"NON DSP ADM DEV PSD IVDo OUR IND STP PHY PRE NAV UNI"
Some user agents may attempt to generate a full P3P policy from a compact
policy, for use in evaluating user preferences. They will not be able to
provide values for the ENTITY
and DISPUTES
elements
as well as a number of the attributes. However:
ACCESS
element, and: a single STATEMENT
element that contains the appropriate RECIPIENT
,
RETENTION
, and PURPOSE
elements, as well as a
dynamic.miscdata
element with
the appropriate CATEGORIES
.ACCESS
element, and: multiple STATEMENT
elements (as many as the different values of the compact retention)
that contain a different corresponding value for the
RETENTION
element, the appropriate RECIPIENT
,
and PURPOSE
elements, as well as a dynamic.miscdata
element with the
appropriate CATEGORIES
.Note that, in agreement with the non ambiguity requirements stated in Section 2.4.1, a site MUST honor a compact policy for a given URI in any case (even when the full policy referenced in the policy reference file for that URI does not correspond, as per Section 4.5, to the compact policy itself).
A data schema is a description of a set of data. P3P includes a way to describe data schemas so that services can communicate to user agents about the data they collect. A data schema is built from a number of data elements, which are specific items of data a service might collect.
Data elements in a data schema can have the following properties:
<DATA>
element.
This is required on all data elements.Data elements are organized into a hierarchy. A data element automatically
includes all of the data elements below it in the hierarchy. For example, the
data element representing "the user's name" includes the data elements
representing "the user's given name", "the user's family name", and so on.
The hierarchy is based on the data element name. Thus the data elements
user.name.given, user.name.family,
and
user.name.nickname
are all children of the data element
user.name
, which is in turn a child of the data element
user
.
P3P has defined a data schema called the P3P base data schema that includes a large number of data elements commonly used by services.
Services may declare new data elements by creating and publishing their
own data schemas. This is done with the <DATASCHEMA>
element. These can either be published in standalone XML files, which are
then referenced by policies that use them, or they can be embedded in the
policies files that reference them. The <DATASCHEMA>
element is defined as follows:
[63] | dataschema |
= |
"<DATASCHEMA" [` xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"`] [xml-lang] ">" *(datadef|datastruct|extension) "</DATASCHEMA>" |
A standalone data schema has the <DATASCHEMA>
element
as the first XML element in the file. It must have the appropriate namespace
defined in the xmlns
attribute to identify it as a P3P data
schema, as follows:
<DATASCHEMA xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <DATA-STRUCT ... /> ... <DATA-DEF ... /> </DATASCHEMA>
Optionally, DATASCHEMA
can contain an xml:lang
attribute (see section 2.4.2),
When a data schema is declared inside a policy file, then the
<DATASCHEMA>
element is still used (as described in Section 3.2.1, "The <POLICIES>
element"), but no namespace attribute is given.
Data schemas contain a number of fields in natural language. Services publishing a data schema MAY wish to translate these fields into multiple languages. The data element short and long names MAY be translated, but the data element name MUST NOT be translated - this field needs to stay constant across translations of a data schema.
If a service is going to provide a data schema in multiple natural
languages, then it SHOULD examine the Accept-Language
HTTP
request-header on requests for that data schema to pick the best available
alternative.
Data schemas often need to reuse a common group of data elements. P3P data schemas support this through data structures. A data structure is a named, abstract definition of a group of data elements. When a data element is defined, it can be defined as being of an unstructured type, in which case it has no child elements. The data element can also be defined as being of a specific structured type, in which case the data element will be automatically expanded to include as sub-elements all of the elements defined in the data structure. For example, the following structure is used to represent a date and time:
<!-- "date" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.year" short-description="Year"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.month" short-description="Month"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.day" short-description="Day"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.hour" short-description="Hour"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.minute" short-description="Minutes"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.second" short-description="Second"/>
Now we shall define a "meeting" data element, which has a time and place for the meeting:
<DATA-DEF name="meeting.time" short-description="Meeting time" structref="#date"/> <DATA-DEF name="meeting.place" short-description="Meeting place/>
Since meeting.place
does not reference a structure, it is of
an unstructured type, and has no child elements. The
meeting.time
element uses the date
structure. By
declaring this, the following sub-elements are created:
meeting.time.ymd.year meeting.time.ymd.month meeting.time.ymd.day meeting.time.hms.hour meeting.time.hms.minute meeting.time.hms.second
A P3P policy can now declare that it collects the meeting
data element, which implies that it collects all of the sub-elements of
meeting
, or it can use data elements lower down the hierarchy -
meeting.time
, for example, or
meeting.time.ymd.day
.
DATA-DEF
and DATA-STRUCT
elements<DATA-DEF>
and
<DATA-STRUCT>
<STATEMENT>
in a P3P policy to describe data covered
by that statement.The following attributes are common to these two elements:
name
(mandatory attribute)user.gender
is different from USER.GENDER
or
User.Gender
. Furthermore, in names of data elements and
structures no number character can appear immediately following a
dot.structref
structref
attribute (and, so, without
an associated structure) are called unstructured.short-description
The DATA-DEF
and DATA-STRUCT
elements can also
contain a long description of the data element or structure, using the
LONG-DESCRIPTION
element.
[64] | datadef |
= |
"<DATA-DEF name=" quotedstring [` structref="` URI-reference `"`] [" short-description=" quotedstring] ">" [categories] ; the categories of the data element. [longdescription] ; the long description of the data element "</DATA-DEF>" |
[65] | datastruct |
= |
"<DATA-STRUCT name=" quotedstring [` structref="` URI-reference `"`] [" short-description=" quotedstring] ">" [categories] ; the categories of the Data Structure. [longdescription] ; the long description of the Data Structure "</DATA-STRUCT>" |
Here, URI-reference is
defined as in [URI]. |
Data elements can be structured, much like in common programming
languages: structures are hierarchical (tree-like) descriptions of data
elements: this hierarchical description is performed in the name
attribute using a dot (".
") character as separator.
P3P provides the P3P base data schema, which has built-in definitions of a number of widely used structures and data elements. All P3P implementations are required to understand the P3P base data schema, so the structures and elements it defines are always available to P3P implementers.
A data schema may include multiple DATA-STRUCT
elements that
together describe a structure. For example, there is no single
DATA-STRUCT
for the uri
data structure (cf. section 5.5.7.1) in the P3P base data schema.
Instead uri.authority
, uri.stem
, and
uri.querystring
are interpreted together to define this
structure
Categories can be assigned to data structures or data elements. The following rules define how those category definitions are meant to be used:
<DATA-STRUCT>
elements MAY include category
definitions with them. If a structure definition includes categories,
then all uses of those structures in data definitions and data structures
pick up those categories. If a structure contains no categories, then the
categories for that structure MAY be defined when it is used in another
structure or data element. Otherwise, a data element using this structure
is a variable-category element. Any uses of a variable-category data
element in a policy require that its categories be listed in the
policy.<DATA-DEF>
with an unstructured type is a
variable-category data element if no categories are defined in the
<DATA-DEF>
, and has exactly those categories listed in
the <DATA-DEF>
if any categories are included.<DATA-DEF>
or <DATA-STRUCT>
with a structured type which has no categories defined on that structure
produces a variable-category data element/structure if no categories are
defined in the <DATA-DEF>
or
<DATA-STRUCT>
. If the <DATA-DEF>
or
<DATA-STRUCT>
does have categories listed, then those
categories are applied to that data element, and all of its sub-elements.
In other words, categories are pushed down into sub-elements when
defining a data element to be of a structured type, and the structured
type does not define any categories.<DATA-DEF>
using a structured type which has
categories defined on that structure picks up all the categories listed
on the structure. In addition, categories may be listed in the
<DATA-DEF>
, and these are added to the categories
defined in the structure. These categories are defined only at the level
of that data element, and are not "pushed down" to any sub-elements.<DATA-STRUCT>
that has no categories assigned to
it, and which is using a structured subtype which has categories defined
on the subtype picks up all the categories listed on the subtype.<DATA-STRUCT>
that has categories assigned to it,
and which is using a structured subtype replaces all of the categories
listed on the subtype.foo.a.w
,
foo.a.y
, and foo.b.z
MUST be considered to
apply to data element foo
.<DATA-STRUCT>
cannot be defined with some
variable-category elements and some fixed-category elements. Either all
of the sub-elements of a structure must be in the variable category, or
else all of them must have one or more assigned categories.<DATA-DEF>
with some variable-category elements
and some fixed-category elements MUST NOT be referenced. Note, this means
that the dynamic
structure (cf. section 5.6.4 "Dynamic Data"), existing in the basedata schema,
cannot be referenced in a policy (each of its sub-elements
dynamic.clickstream
, dynamic.http
, etc. can be
referenced individually).Consider the case where the company HyperSpeedExample wishes to describe
the features of a vehicle, using a structure called vehicle
.
This structure includes:
vehicle.model
),vehicle.color
),vehicle.built.year
),
andvehicle.price
).If HyperspeedExample also wants to include in the definition of a vehicle
the location of manufacture, it could add other fields to the structure with
all the relevant data like country, street address, postal code, and so on.
But, each part of a structure can use other structures as well:
structures can be composed. In this case, the P3P base data
schema already provides a structure postal
,
describing all the postal information of a location. So, the final definition
of the structure vehicle is
vehicle.model
(unstructured)vehicle.color
(unstructured)vehicle.price
(unstructured)vehicle.built.year
(unstructured)vehicle.built.where
(with structure postal
from the base data schema)The structure postal
has fields postal.street
,
postal.city
, and so on. Since we have applied the structure
postal
to vehicle.built.where
, it means that we can
access the street and city of a vehicle using the descriptions
vehicle.built.where.street
and
vehicle.built.where.city
respectively. So, by applying a
structure (in this case, postal
) we can build very complex
descriptions in a modular way.
HyperSpeedExample wants to declare that all of the vehicle information
will be in the <preference/>
category. The
vehicle.model, vehicle.color, vehicle.price,
and
vehicle.built.year
fields are all unstructured types, so
assigning them to the <preference/>
category accomplishes
this for those fields. Since vehicle is a structure definition, assigning the
<preference/>
category to vehicle.built.where
will override (replace) the categories defined on all of the sub-elements of
vehicle.built.where
, placing all of them in the
<preference/>
category, even though the
postal
structure was originally defined as being in other
categories.
As said, structures do not contain data elements; they are just abstract
data types. We can use them to rapidly build structured collections of data
elements. Going on with the example, HyperSpeedExample needs this abstract
description of the features of a vehicle because it wants to actually
exchange data about cars and motorcycles. So, it could define two data
elements called car
and motorcycle
, both with the
above structure vehicle
.
This description of the data elements and data structures is encoded in XML using a data schema. In the HyperSpeedExample case, it would be something like:
<DATASCHEMA xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.model" short-description="Model"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.color" short-description="Color"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.built.year" short-description="Construction Year"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.built.where" structref="http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base#postal" short-description="Construction Place"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-DEF name="car" structref="#vehicle"/> <DATA-DEF name="motorcycle" structref="#vehicle"/> </DATASCHEMA>
Continuing with the example, in order to reference a car model and construction year, Hyperspeed or any other service could send the following references inside a P3P policy:
<DATA-GROUP> <!-- First, the "car.model" data element, whose definition is in the data schema at http://www.HyperSpeed.example.com/models-schema --> <DATA ref="http://www.HyperSpeed.example.com/models-schema#car.model"/> <!-- And second, the "car.built.year" data element, whose definition is the data schema at http://www.HyperSpeed.example.com/models-schema --> <DATA ref="http://www.HyperSpeed.example.com/models-schema#car.built.year"/> </DATA-GROUP>
Using the base
attribute,
the above references can be written in an even more compact way:
<DATA-GROUP base="http://www.HyperSpeed.example.com/models-schema"> <DATA ref="#car.model"/> <DATA ref="#car.built.year"/> </DATA-GROUP>
Alternatively, the data schema could be embedded directly into a policy file. In this case, the policy file could look like:
<POLICIES xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <!-- Embedded data schema --> <DATASCHEMA> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.model" short-description="Model"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.color" short-description="Color"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.built.year" short-description="Construction Year""> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="vehicle.built.where" structref="http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base#postal" short-description="Construction Place"> <CATEGORIES><preference/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-DEF name="car" structref="#vehicle"/> <DATA-DEF name="motorcycle" structref="#vehicle"/> </DATASCHEMA> <!-- end of embedded data schema --> <POLICY name="policy1" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc1"> ... <DATA-GROUP base=""> <DATA ref="#car.model"/> <DATA ref="#car.built.year"/> </DATA-GROUP> ... </POLICY> <POLICY name="policy2" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc2"> .... </POLICY> <POLICY name="policy3" discuri="http://www.example.com/disc3"> .... </POLICY> </POLICIES>
Note that in any case there MUST NOT be more than one data schema per file.
Note that the data element names specified in the base data schema or in extension data schemas may be used for purposes other than P3P policies. For example, Web sites may use these names to label HTML form fields. By referring to data the same way in P3P policies and forms, automated form-filling tools can be better integrated with P3P user agents.
An essential requirement on data schemas is the persistence of data schemas: data schemas that can be fetched at a certain URI can only be changed by extending the data schema in a backward-compatible way (that is to say, changing the data schema does not change the meaning of any policy using that schema). This way, the URI of a policy acts in a sense like a unique identifier for the data elements and structures contained therein: any data schema that is not backward-compatible must therefore use a new different URI.
Note that a useful application of the persistence of data schema is given
for example in the case of multi-lingual sites: multiple language versions
(translations) of the same data schema can be offered by the server, using
the HTTP "Content-Language
" response header field to properly
indicate that a particular language has been used for the data schema.
The Basic Data Structures are structures used by the P3P base data schema (and possibly, due to their basic nature, they should be reused as much as possible by other different data schemas). All P3P-compliant user agent implementations MUST be aware of the Basic Data Structures. Each table below specifies the elements of a basic data structure, the categories associated, their structures, and the display names shown to users. More than one category may be associated with a fixed data element. However, each base data element is assigned to only one category whenever possible. Data schema designers are recommended to do the same.
The date structure specifies a date. Since date information can be used in different ways, depending on the context, all date information is tagged as being of "variable" category (see Section 5.7.2). For example, schema definitions can explicitly set the corresponding category in the element referencing this data structure, where soliciting the birthday of a user might be "Demographic and Socioeconomic Data", while the expiration date of a credit card might belong to the "Purchase Information" category.
date |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
ymd.year | (variable-category) | unstructured | Year |
ymd.month | (variable-category) | unstructured | Month |
ymd.day | (variable-category) | unstructured | Day |
hms.hour | (variable-category) | unstructured | Hour |
hms.minute | (variable-category) | unstructured | Minute |
hms.second | (variable-category) | unstructured | Second |
fractionsecond | (variable-category) | unstructured | Fraction of Second |
timezone | (variable-category) | unstructured | Time Zone |
The "time zone" information is for example described in the time standard [ISO8601]. Note that "date.ymd" and "date.hms" can be used to fast reference the year/month/day and hour/minutes/seconds blocks respectively.
The personname structure specifies information about the naming of a person.
personname |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
prefix | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Name Prefix |
given | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Given Name (First Name) |
family | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Family Name (Last Name) |
middle | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Middle Name |
suffix | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Name Suffix |
nickname | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Nickname |
The login structure specify information (IDs and passwords) for computer systems and Web sites which require authentication. Note that this data element should not be used for computer systems or Web sites which use digital certificates for authentication: in those cases, the certificate structure should be used.
login |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
id | Unique Identifiers | unstructured | Login ID |
password | Unique Identifiers | unstructured | Login Password |
The "id" field represents the ID portion of the login information for a computer system. Often, user IDs are made public, while passwords are kept secret. This does not include any type of biometric authentication mechanisms.
The "password" field represents the password portion of the login information for a computer system. This is a secret data value, usually a character string, that is used in authenticating a user. Passwords are typically kept secret, and are generally considered to be sensitive information
The certificate structure is used to specify identity certificates (like, for example, X.509).
certificate |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
key | Unique Identifiers | unstructured | Certificate Key |
format | Unique Identifiers | unstructured | Certificate Format |
The "format" field is used to represent the information of an IANA registered public key or authentication certificate format, while the "key" field is used to represent the corresponding certificate key.
The telephonenum structure specifies the characteristics of a telephone number.
telephonenum |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
intcode | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | International Telephone Code |
loccode | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Local Telephone Area Code |
number | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Telephone Number |
ext | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Telephone Extension |
comment | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Telephone Optional Comments |
The contact structure is used to specify contact information. Services can specify precisely which set of data they need, postal, telecommunication, or online address information.
contact |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
postal | Physical Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | postal | Postal Address Information |
telecom | Physical Contact Information | telecom | Telecommunications Information |
online | Online Contact Information | online | Online Address Information |
The postal structure specifies a postal mailing address.
postal |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
name | Physical Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | personname | Name |
street | Physical Contact Information | unstructured | Street Address |
city | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | City |
stateprov | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | State or Province |
postalcode | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Postal Code |
country | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Country Name |
organization | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Organization Name |
The "country" field represents the information of the name of the country (for example, one among the countries listed in [ISO3166]).
The telecom structure specifies telecommunication information about a person.
telecom |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
telephone | Physical Contact Information | telephonenum | Telephone Number |
fax | Physical Contact Information | telephonenum | Fax Number |
mobile | Physical Contact Information | telephonenum | Mobile Telephone Number |
pager | Physical Contact Information | telephonenum | Pager Number |
The online structure specifies online information about a person or legal entity.
online |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
Online Contact Information | unstructured | Email Address | |
uri | Online Contact Information | unstructured | Home Page Address |
Two structures used for representing forms of Internet addresses are
provided. The uri
structure covers Universal Resource
Identifiers (URI), which are defined in more detail in [URI]. The ipaddr
structure represents IP
addresses and Domain Name System (DNS) hostnames.
uri |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
authority | (variable-category) | unstructured | URI Authority |
stem | (variable-category) | unstructured | URI Stem |
querystring | (variable-category) | unstructured | Query-string Portion of URI |
The authority of a URI is defined as the authority
component
in [URI]. The stem of a URI is defined as the information
contained in the portion of the URI after the authority and up to (and
including) the first '?' character in the URI, and the querystring is the
information contained in the portion of the URI after the first '?'
character. For URIs which do not contain a '?' character, the stem is the
entire URI, and the querystring is empty.
Since URI information can be used in different ways, depending on the
context, all the fields in the uri
structure are tagged as being
of "variable" category. Schema definitions MUST explicitly set the
corresponding category in the element referencing this data structure.
The ipaddr
structure represents the hostname and IP address
of a system.
ipaddr |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
hostname | Computer Information | unstructured | Complete Host and Domain Name |
partialhostname | Demographic | unstructured | Partial Hostname |
fullip | Computer Information | unstructured | Full IP Address |
partialip | Demographic | unstructured | Partial IP Address |
The hostname
element is used to represent collection of
either the simple hostname of a system, or the full hostname including domain
name. The partialhostname
element represents the information of
a fully-qualified hostname which has had at least the host portion
removed from the hostname. In other words, everything up to the first '.' in
the fully-qualified hostname MUST be removed for an address to quality as a
"partial hostname".
The fullip
element represents the information of a full IP
version 4 or IP version 6 address. The partialip
element
represents an IP version 4 address (only - not a version 6 address) which has
had at least the last 7 bits of information removed. This removal
MUST be done by replacing those bits with a fixed pattern for all visitors
(for example, all 0's or all 1's).
Certain Web sites are known to make use not of the visitor's entire IP address or hostname, but rather make use of a reduced form of that information. By collecting only a subset of the address information, the site visitor is given some measure of anonymity. It is certainly not the intent of this specification to claim that these "stripped" IP addresses or hostnames are impossible to associate with an individual user, but rather that it is significantly more difficult to do so. Sites which perform this data reduction MAY wish to declare this practice in order to more-accurately reflect their practices.
The loginfo
structure is used to represent information
typically stored in Web-server access logs.
loginfo |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
uri | Navigation and click-stream data | uri | URI of Requested Resource |
timestamp | Navigation and click-stream data | date | Request Timestamp |
clientip | Computer Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | ipaddr | Client's IP Address or Hostname |
other.httpmethod | Navigation and click-stream data | unstructured | HTTP Request Method |
other.bytes | Navigation and click-stream data | unstructured | Data Bytes in Response |
other.statuscode | Navigation and click-stream data | unstructured | Response Status Code |
The resource in the HTTP request is captured by the uri
field. The time at which the server processes the request is represented by
the timestamp
field. Server implementations are free to define
this field as the time the request was received, the time that the server
began sending the response, the time that sending the response was complete,
or some other convenient representation of the time the request was
processed. The IP address of the client system making the request is given by
the clientip
field.
The other
data fields represent other information commonly
stored in Web server access logs. other.httpmethod
is the HTTP
method (such as GET
, POST
, etc) in the client's
request. other.bytes
indicates the number of bytes in the
response-body sent by the server. other.statuscode
is the HTTP
status code on the request, such as 200, 302, or 404 (see section 6.1.1 of
[HTTP1.1] for details).
The httpinfo
structure represents information carried by the
HTTP protocol which is not covered by the loginfo
structure.
httpinfo |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
referer | Navigation and click-stream data | uri | Last URI Requested by the User |
useragent | Computer Information | unstructured | User Agent Information |
The useragent
field represents the information in the HTTP
User-Agent
header (which gives information about the type and
version of the user's Web browser), and/or the HTTP accept
*
headers.
The referer
field represents the information in the HTTP
Referer
header, which gives information about the previous page
visited by the user. Note that this field is misspelled in exactly the same
way as the corresponding HTTP header.
All P3P-compliant user agent implementations MUST be aware of the data
elements in the P3P base data schema. The P3P base data schema includes the
definition of the basic data structures, and four data element sets:
user
, thirdparty
,
business
and
dynamic
. The user
,
thirdparty
and business
sets include elements that
users and/or businesses might provide values for, while the
dynamic
set includes elements that are dynamically generated in
the course of a user's browsing session. User agents may support a variety of
mechanisms that allow users to provide values for the elements in the
user
set and store them in a data repository, including
mechanisms that support multiple personae. Users may choose not to provide
values for these data elements.
The formal XML definition of the P3P base data schema is given in Appendix 3. In the following sections, the base data elements and sets are explained one by one. In the future there will be in all likelihood demand for the creation of other data sets and elements. Obvious applications include catalogue, payment, and agent/system attribute schemas (an extensive set of system elements is provided for example in http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-agent-attributes.)
Each table below specifies a set, the elements within the set, the category associated with the element, its structure, and the display name shown to users. More than one category may be associated with a fixed data element. However, each base data element is assigned to only one category whenever possible. It is recommended that data schema designers do the same.
The user
data set includes general
information about the user.
user |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
name | Physical Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | personname | User's Name |
bdate | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | date | User's Birth Date |
login | Unique Identifiers | login | User's Login Information |
cert | Unique Identifiers | certificate | User's Identity Certificate |
gender | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | User's Gender (Male or Female) |
employer | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | User's Employer |
department | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Department or Division of Organization where User is Employed |
jobtitle | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | User's Job Title |
home-info | Physical Contact Information, Online Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | contact | User's Home Contact Information |
business-info | Physical Contact Information, Online Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | contact | User's Business Contact Information |
Note, that this data set includes elements that are actually sets of data
themselves. These sets are defined in the Data
Structures subsection of this document. The short display name for an
individual element contained within a data set is defined as the
concatenation of the short display names that have been defined for the set
and the element, separated by a separator appropriate for the language/script
in question, e.g. a comma for English. For example, the short display name
for user.home-info.postal.postalcode
could be "User's Home
Contact Information, Postal Address Information, Postal code". User agent
implementations may prefer to develop their own short display names rather
than using the concatenated names when displaying information for the
user.
The thirdparty
data set allows users and
businesses to provide values for a related third party. This can be useful
whenever third party information needs to be exchanged, for example when
ordering a present online that should be sent to another person, or when
providing information about one's spouse or business partner. Such
information could be stored in a user repository alongside the
user
data set. User agents may offer to store multiple such
thirdparty
data sets and allow users to select the appropriate
values from a list when necessary.
The thirdparty
data set is identical with the
user
data set. See section 5.6.1 User
Data for details.
The business
data set features a subset of
user
data relevant for describing legal entities. In P3P1.0,
this data set is primarily used for declaring the policy entity, although it
should also be applicable to business-to-business interactions.
business |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
name | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Organization Name |
department | Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | unstructured | Department or Division of Organization |
cert | Unique Identifiers | certificate | Organization Identity Certificate |
contact-info | Physical Contact Information, Online Contact Information, Demographic and Socioeconomic Data | contact | Contact Information for the Organization |
In some cases, there is a need to specify data elements that do not have
fixed values that a user might type in or store in a repository. In the P3P
base data schema, all such elements are grouped under the
dynamic
data set. Sites may refer to the types of data they
collect using the dynamic data set only, rather than enumerating all of the
specific data elements.
dynamic |
Category | Structure | Short display name |
clickstream | Navigation and Click-stream Data, Computer Information | loginfo | Click-stream Information |
http | Navigation and Click-stream Data, Computer Information | httpinfo | HTTP Protocol Information |
clientevents | Navigation and Click-stream Data | unstructured | User's Interaction with a Resource |
cookies | (variable-category) | unstructured | Use of HTTP Cookies |
miscdata | (variable-category) | unstructured | Miscellaneous Non-base Data Schema Information |
searchtext | Interactive Data | unstructured | Search Terms |
interactionrecord | Interactive Data | unstructured | Server Stores the Transaction History |
These elements are often implicit in navigation or Web interactions. They should be used with categories to describe the type of information collected through these methods. A brief description of each element follows.
clickstream
clickstream
element is expected to apply to
practically all Web sites. It represents the combination of information
typically found in Web server access logs: the IP address or hostname
of the user's computer, the URI of the resource requested, the time the
request was made, the HTTP method used in the request, the size of the
response, and the HTTP status code in the response. Web sites that
collect standard server access logs as well as sites which do URI path
analysis can use this data element to describe how that data will be
used. Web sites that collect only some of the data elements listed for
the clickstream
element MAY choose to list those specific
elements rather than the entire dynamic.clickstream
element. This allows sites with more limited data-collection practices
to accurately present those practices to their visitors.http
http
element contains additional information
contained in the HTTP protocol. See the definition of the
httpinfo
structure for descriptions of specific elements.
Sites MAY use the dynamic.http
field as a shorthand to
cover all the elements in the httpinfo
structure if they
wish, or they MAY reference the specific elements in the
httpinfo
structure.clientevents
clientevents
element represents data about how the
user interacts with their Web browser while interacting with a
resource. For example, an application may wish to collect information
about whether the user moved their mouse over a certain image on a
page, or whether the user ever brought up the help window in a Java
applet. This kind of information is represented by the
dynamic.clientevents data element. Much of this interaction record is
represented by the events and data defined by the Document Object Model
(DOM) Level 2 Events [DOM2-Events]. The
clientevents
data element also covers any other data
regarding the user's interaction with their browser while the browser
is displaying a resource. The exception is events which are covered by
other elements in the base data schema. For example, requesting a page
by clicking on a link is part of the user's interaction with their
browser while viewing a page, but merely collecting the URL the user
has clicked on does not require declaring this data element;
clickstream
covers that event. However, the DOM event
DOMFocusIn
(representing the user moving their mouse over
an object on a page) is not covered by any other existing element, so
if a site is collecting the occurrence of this event, then it needs to
state that it collects the dynamic.clientevents element. Items covered
by this data element are typically collected by client-side scripting
languages, such as JavaScript, or by client-side applets, such as
ActiveX or Java applets. Note that while the previous discussion has
been in terms of a user viewing a resource, this data element also
applies to Web applications which do not display resources visually -
for example, audio-based Web browsers.cookies
cookies
element should be used whenever HTTP cookies
are set or retrieved by a site. Please note that cookies
is a variable data element and requires the explicit
declaration of usage categories in a policy.miscdata
miscdata
element references information collected by
the service that the service does not reference using a specific data
element. Categories have to be used to better describe these data:
sites MUST reference a separate miscdata
element in their
policies for each category of miscellaneous data they collect.searchtext
searchtext
element references a specific type of
solicitation used for searching and indexing sites. For example, if the
only fields on a search engine page are search fields, the site only
needs to disclose that data element.interactionrecord
interactionrecord
element should be used if the
server is keeping track of the interaction it has with the user (i.e.
information other than clickstream data, for example account
transactions, etc).Most of the elements in the base data schema are so called "fixed" data elements: they belong to one or at most two category classes. By assigning a category invariably to elements or structures in the base data schema, services and users are able to refer to entire groups of elements simply by referencing the corresponding category. For example, using [APPEL], the privacy preferences exchange language, users can write rules that warn them when they visit a site that collects any data element in a certain category.
When creating data schemas for fixed data elements, schema creators have to explicitly enumerate the categories that these element belong to. For example:
<DATA-STRUCT name="postal.street" structref="#text" short-description="Street Address"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT>
If an element or structure belongs to multiple categories, multiple elements referencing the appropriate categories can be used. For example, the following piece of XML can be used to declare that the data elements in user.name have both category "physical" and "demographic":
<DATA-STRUCT name="user.name" structref="#personname" short-description="User's Name"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT>
Please note that the category classes of fixed data elements/structures can not be overridden, for example by writing rules or policies that assign a different category to a known fixed base data element. User Agents MUST ignore such categories and instead use the original category (or set of categories) listed in the schema definition. User Agents MAY preferably alert the user that a fixed data element is used together with a non-standard category class.
Not all data elements/structures in the base data schema belong to a pre-determined category class. Some can contain information from a range of categories, depending on a particular situation. Such elements/structures are called variable-category data elements/structures (or "variable data element/structure" for short). Although most variable data elements in the P3P base data schema are combined in the dynamic element set, they can appear in any data set, even mixed with fixed-category data elements.
When creating a schema definition for such elements and/or structures, schema authors MUST NOT list an explicit category attribute, otherwise the element/structure becomes fixed. For example when specifying the "Year" Data Structure, which can take various categories depending on the situation (e.g. when used for a credit card expiration date vs. for a birth date), the following schema definition can be used:
<DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.year" short-description="Year"/> <!-- Variable Data Structure-->
This allows new schema extensions that reference such variable-category Data Structures to assign a specific category to derived elements, depending on their usage in that extension. For example, an e-commerce schema extension could thus define a credit card expiration date as follows:
<DATA-STRUCT name="Card.ExpDate" structref="#date.ymd" short-description="Card Expiration Date"> <CATEGORIES><purchase/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT>
Under these conditions, the variable Data Structure date is assigned a fixed category "Purchase Information" when being used for specifying a credit card expiration date.
Note that while user preferences can list such variable data elements
without any additional category information (effectively expressing
preferences over any usage of this element), services MUST always
explicitly specify the categories that apply to the usage of a variable data
element in their particular policy. This information has to appear as a
category element in the corresponding DATA
element listed in the
policy, for example as in:
<POLICY ... > ... <DATA ref="#dynamic.cookies"><CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES></DATA> ... </POLICY>
where a service declares that cookies are used to recognize the user at this site (i.e. category Unique Identifiers).
If a service wants to declare a data element that is in multiple categories, it simply declares the corresponding categories (as shown in the above section):
<POLICY ... > ... <DATA ref="#dynamic.cookies"><CATEGORIES><uniqueid/><preference/></CATEGORIES></DATA> ... </POLICY>
With the above declaration a service announces that it uses cookies both to recognize the user at this site and for storing user preference data. Note that for the purpose of P3P there is no difference whether this information is stored in two separate cookies or in a single one.
Finally, note that categories can be inherited as well: Categories inherit downward when a field is structured, but only into fields which have no predefined category. Therefore, we suggest to schema authors that they do their best to insure that all applicable categories are applied to new data elements they create.
P3P offers Web sites a great deal of flexibility in how they describe the types of data they collect.
Any of these three methods may be combined within a single policy.
By using the dynamic.miscdata
element, sites
can specify the types of data they collect without having to enumerate every
individual data element. This may be convenient for sites that collect a lot
of data or sites belonging to large organizations that want to offer a single
P3P policy covering the entire organization. However, the disadvantage of
this approach is that user agents will have to assume that the site might
collect any data element belonging to the categories referenced by the site.
So, for example, if a site's policy states that it collects
dynamic.miscdata
of the physical contact
information category, but the only physical contact information it collects
is business address, user agents will nonetheless assume that the site might
also collect telephone numbers. If the site wishes to be clear that it does
not collect telephone numbers or any other physical contact information other
than business address, than it should disclose that it collects
user.business-info.contact.postal
. Furthermore,
as user agents are developed with automatic form-filling capabilities, it is
likely that sites that enumerate the data they collect will be able to better
integrate with these tools.
By defining new data schemas, sites can precisely specify the data they collect beyond the base data set. However, if user agents are unfamiliar with the elements defined in these schemas, they will be able to provide only minimal information to the user about these new elements. The information they provide will be based on the category and display names specified for each element.
Regardless of whether a site wishes to make general or specific data
disclosures, there are additional advantages to disclosing specific elements
from the dynamic
data set. For example, by
disclosing dynamic.cookies
a site can indicate
that it uses cookies and explain the purpose of this use. User agent
implementations that offer users cookie control interfaces based on this
information are encouraged. Likewise, user agents that by default do not send
the HTTP_REFERER header, might look for the
dynamic.http.referer
element in P3P policies
and send the header if it will be used for a purpose the user finds
acceptable.
The data schema corresponding to the P3P base data schema follows for easy reference. The schema is also present as a separate file at the URI http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base .
<DATASCHEMA xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <!-- ********** Base Data Structures ********** --> <!-- "date" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.year" short-description="Year"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.month" short-description="Month"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.ymd.day" short-description="Day"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.hour" short-description="Hour"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.minute" short-description="Minutes"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.hms.second" short-description="Second"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.fractionsecond" short-description="Fraction of Second"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="date.timezone" short-description="Time Zone"/> <!-- "login" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="login.id" short-description="Login ID"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="login.password" short-description="Login Password"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "personname" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.prefix" short-description="Name Prefix"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.given" short-description="Given Name (First Name)"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.middle" short-description="Middle Name"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.family" short-description="Family Name (Last Name)"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.suffix" short-description="Name Suffix"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="personname.nickname" short-description="Nickname"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "certificate" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="certificate.key" short-description="Certificate key"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="certificate.format" short-description="Certificate format"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "telephonenum" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="telephonenum.intcode" short-description="International Telephone Code"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telephonenum.loccode" short-description="Local Telephone Area Code"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telephonenum.number" short-description="Telephone Number"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telephonenum.ext" short-description="Telephone Extension"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telephonenum.comment" short-description="Telephone Optional Comments"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "postal" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.name" structref="#personname"> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.street" short-description="Street Address"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.city" short-description="City"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.stateprov" short-description="State or Province"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.postalcode" short-description="Postal Code"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.organization" short-description="Organization Name"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="postal.country" short-description="Country Name"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "telecom" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="telecom.telephone" short-description="Telephone Number" structref="#telephonenum"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telecom.fax" short-description="Fax Number" structref="#telephonenum"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telecom.mobile" short-description="Mobile Telephone Number" structref="#telephonenum"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="telecom.pager" short-description="Pager Number" structref="#telephonenum"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "online" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="online.email" short-description="Email Address"> <CATEGORIES><online/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="online.uri" short-description="Home Page Address"> <CATEGORIES><online/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "contact" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="contact.postal" short-description="Postal Address Information" structref="#postal"> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="contact.telecom" short-description="Telecommunications Information" structref="#telecom"> <CATEGORIES><physical/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="contact.online" short-description="Online Address Information" structref="#online"> <CATEGORIES><online/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "uri" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="uri.authority" short-description="URI Authority"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="uri.stem" short-description="URI Stem"/> <DATA-STRUCT name="uri.querystring" short-description="Query-string Portion of URI"/> <!-- "ipaddr" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="ipaddr.hostname" short-description="Complete Host and Domain Name"> <CATEGORIES><computer/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="ipaddr.partialhostname" short-description="Partial Hostname"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="ipaddr.fullip" short-description="Full IP Address"> <CATEGORIES><computer/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="ipaddr.partialip" short-description="Partial IP Address"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "loginfo" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.uri" short-description="URI of Requested Resource" structref="#uri"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.timestamp" short-description="Request Timestamp" structref="#date"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.clientip" short-description="Client's IP Address or Hostname" structref="#ipaddr"> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.other.httpmethod" short-description="HTTP Request Method"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.other.bytes" short-description="Data Bytes in Response"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="loginfo.other.statuscode" short-description="Response Status Code"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- "httpinfo" Data Structure --> <DATA-STRUCT name="httpinfo.referer" short-description="Last URI Requested by the User" structref="#uri"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <DATA-STRUCT name="httpinfo.useragent" short-description="User Agent Information"> <CATEGORIES><computer/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-STRUCT> <!-- ********** Base Data Schemas ********** --> <!-- "dynamic" Data Schema --> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.clickstream" short-description="Click-stream Information" structref="#loginfo"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/><computer/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.http" short-description="HTTP Protocol Information" structref="#httpinfo"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/><computer/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.clientevents" short-description="User's Interaction with a Resource"> <CATEGORIES><navigation/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.cookies" short-description="Use of HTTP Cookies"/> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.searchtext" short-description="Search Terms"> <CATEGORIES><interactive/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.interactionrecord" short-description="Server Stores the Transaction History"> <CATEGORIES><interactive/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="dynamic.miscdata" short-description="Miscellaneous Non-base Data Schema = information"/> <!-- "user" Data Schema --> <DATA-DEF name="user.name" short-description="User's Name" structref="#personname"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.bdate" short-description="User's Birth Date" structref="#date"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.login" short-description="User's Login Information" structref="#login"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.cert" short-description="User's Identity Certificate" structref="#certificate"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.gender" short-description="User's Gender"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.jobtitle" short-description="User's Job Title"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.home-info" short-description="User's Home Contact Information" structref="#contact"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><online/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.business-info" short-description="User's Business Contact Information" structref="#contact"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><online/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.employer" short-description="Name of User's Employer"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="user.department" short-description="Department or Division of Organization where User is Employed"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <!-- "thirdparty" Data Schema --> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.name" short-description="Third Party's Name" structref="#personname"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.bdate" short-description="Third Party's Birth Date" structref="#date"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.login" short-description="Third Party's Login Information" structref="#login"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.cert" short-description="Third Party's Identity Certificate" structref="#certificate"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.gender" short-description="Third Party's Gender"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.jobtitle" short-description="Third Party's Job Title"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.home-info" short-description="Third Party's Home Contact Information" structref="#contact"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><online/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.business-info" short-description="Third Party's Business Contact Information" structref="#contact"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><online/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.employer" short-description="Name of Third Party's Employer"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="thirdparty.department" short-description="Department or Division of Organization where Third Party is Employed"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <!-- "business" Data Schema --> <DATA-DEF name="business.name" short-description="Organization Name"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="business.department" short-description="Department or Division of Organization"> <CATEGORIES><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="business.cert" short-description="Organization Identity certificate" structref="#certificate"> <CATEGORIES><uniqueid/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> <DATA-DEF name="business.contact-info" short-description="Contact Information for the Organization" structref="#contact"> <CATEGORIES><physical/><online/><demographic/></CATEGORIES> </DATA-DEF> </DATASCHEMA>
This appendix contains the XML schema for P3P policy reference files, for P3P policy documents, and for P3P data schema documents. P3P policy reference files, P3P policy documents and P3P data schema documents are XML documents that MUST conform to this schema. Note that this schema is based on the XML Schema specification [XML-Schema1][XML-Schema2]. The schema is also present as a separate file at the URI http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1.xsd .
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <schema xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema' xmlns:p3p='http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1' targetNamespace='http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1' elementFormDefault='qualified'> <!-- enabling xml:lang attribute --> <import namespace='http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace' schemaLocation='http://www.w3.org/2001/xml.xsd' /> <!-- Basic P3P Data Type --> <simpleType name='yes_no'> <restriction base='string'> <enumeration value='yes'/> <enumeration value='no'/> </restriction> </simpleType> <!-- *********** Policy Reference *********** --> <!-- ************** META ************** --> <element name='META'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:POLICY-REFERENCES'/> <element ref='p3p:POLICIES' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ******* POLICY-REFERENCES ******** --> <element name='POLICY-REFERENCES'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXPIRY' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:POLICY-REF' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:HINT' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <element name='POLICY-REF'> <complexType> <sequence> <element name='INCLUDE' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' type='anyURI'/> <element name='EXCLUDE' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' type='anyURI'/> <element name='COOKIE-INCLUDE' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' type='p3p:cookie-element'/> <element name='COOKIE-EXCLUDE' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' type='p3p:cookie-element'/> <element name='METHOD' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' type='anyURI'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute name='about' type='anyURI' use='required'/> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='cookie-element'> <attribute name='name' type='string' use='optional'/> <attribute name='value' type='string' use='optional'/> <attribute name='domain' type='string' use='optional'/> <attribute name='path' type='string' use='optional'/> </complexType> <!-- ************* HINT ************* --> <element name='HINT'> <complexType> <attribute name='scope' type='string' use='required'/> <attribute name='path' type='string' use='required'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ************ POLICIES ************ --> <element name='POLICIES'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXPIRY' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:DATASCHEMA' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:POLICY' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ************* EXPIRY ************* --> <element name='EXPIRY'> <complexType> <attribute name='max-age' type='nonNegativeInteger' use='optional'/> <attribute name='date' type='string' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- **************** Policy **************** --> <!-- ************* POLICY ************* --> <element name='POLICY'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:TEST' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:ENTITY'/> <element ref='p3p:ACCESS'/> <element ref='p3p:DISPUTES-GROUP' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:STATEMENT' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute name='discuri' type='anyURI' use='required'/> <attribute name='opturi' type='anyURI' use='optional'/> <attribute name='name' type='ID' use='required'/> <attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ************* TEST ************* --> <element name='TEST'> <complexType/> </element> <!-- ************* ENTITY ************* --> <element name='ENTITY'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element name='DATA-GROUP'> <complexType> <sequence> <element name='DATA' type='p3p:data-in-entity' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='data-in-entity' mixed='true'> <attribute name='ref' type='anyURI' use='required'/> </complexType> <!-- ************* ACCESS ************* --> <element name='ACCESS'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice> <element name='nonident' type='p3p:access-value'/> <element name='ident-contact' type='p3p:access-value'/> <element name='other-ident' type='p3p:access-value'/> <element name='contact-and-other' type='p3p:access-value'/> <element name='all' type='p3p:access-value'/> <element name='none' type='p3p:access-value'/> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='access-value'/> <!-- ************ DISPUTES ************ --> <element name='DISPUTES-GROUP'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:DISPUTES' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <element name='DISPUTES'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice minOccurs='0'> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:LONG-DESCRIPTION'/> <element ref='p3p:IMG' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:REMEDIES' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:IMG'/> <element ref='p3p:REMEDIES' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:REMEDIES'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </choice> </sequence> <attribute name='resolution-type' use='required'> <simpleType> <restriction base='string'> <enumeration value='service'/> <enumeration value='independent'/> <enumeration value='court'/> <enumeration value='law'/> </restriction> </simpleType> </attribute> <attribute name='service' type='anyURI' use='required'/> <attribute name='verification' type='string' use='optional'/> <attribute name='short-description' type='string' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ******** LONG-DESCRIPTION ******** --> <element name='LONG-DESCRIPTION'> <simpleType> <restriction base='string'/> </simpleType> </element> <!-- ************** IMG *************** --> <element name='IMG'> <complexType> <attribute name='src' type='anyURI' use='required'/> <attribute name='width' type='nonNegativeInteger' use='optional'/> <attribute name='height' type='nonNegativeInteger' use='optional'/> <attribute name='alt' type='string' use='required'/> </complexType> </element> <!-- ************ REMEDIES ************ --> <element name='REMEDIES'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element name='correct' type='p3p:remedies-value'/> <element name='money' type='p3p:remedies-value'/> <element name='law' type='p3p:remedies-value'/> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='remedies-value'/> <!-- *********** STATEMENT ************ --> <element name='STATEMENT'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element name='CONSEQUENCE' minOccurs='0' type='string'/> <choice> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:PURPOSE'/> <element ref='p3p:RECIPIENT'/> <element ref='p3p:RETENTION'/> <element name='DATA-GROUP' type='p3p:data-group-type' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <sequence> <element name='NON-IDENTIFIABLE'/> <element ref='p3p:PURPOSE' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:RECIPIENT' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:RETENTION' minOccurs='0'/> <element name='DATA-GROUP' type='p3p:data-group-type' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <!-- ************ PURPOSE ************* --> <element name='PURPOSE'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element name='current' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='admin' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='develop' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='tailoring' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='pseudo-analysis' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='pseudo-decision' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='individual-analysis' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='individual-decision' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='contact' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='historical' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='telemarketing' type='p3p:purpose-value'/> <element name='other-purpose'> <complexType mixed='true'> <attribute name='required' use='optional' type='p3p:required-value'/> </complexType> </element> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <simpleType name='required-value'> <restriction base='string'> <enumeration value='always'/> <enumeration value='opt-in'/> <enumeration value='opt-out'/> </restriction> </simpleType> <complexType name='purpose-value'> <attribute name='required' use='optional' type='p3p:required-value' default='always' /> </complexType> <!-- *********** RECIPIENT ************ --> <element name='RECIPIENT'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element name='ours'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:recipient-description' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <element name='same' type='p3p:recipient-value'/> <element name='other-recipient' type='p3p:recipient-value'/> <element name='delivery' type='p3p:recipient-value'/> <element name='public' type='p3p:recipient-value'/> <element name='unrelated' type='p3p:recipient-value'/> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='recipient-value'> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:recipient-description' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute name='required' use='optional' type='p3p:required-value'/> </complexType> <element name='recipient-description'> <complexType mixed='true'/> </element> <!-- *********** RETENTION ************ --> <element name='RETENTION'> <complexType> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <choice> <element name='no-retention' type='p3p:retention-value'/> <element name='stated-purpose' type='p3p:retention-value'/> <element name='legal-requirement' type='p3p:retention-value'/> <element name='indefinitely' type='p3p:retention-value'/> <element name='business-practices' type='p3p:retention-value'/> </choice> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='retention-value'/> <!-- ************** DATA ************** --> <complexType name='data-group-type'> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element name='DATA' type='p3p:data-in-statement' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION' minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'/> </sequence> <attribute name='base' type='anyURI' use='optional' default='http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base'/> </complexType> <complexType name='data-in-statement' mixed='true'> <sequence minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element ref='p3p:CATEGORIES'/> </sequence> <attribute name='ref' type='anyURI' use='required'/> <attribute name='optional' use='optional' default='no' type='p3p:yes_no'/> </complexType> <!-- ************** Data Schema ************* --> <!-- *********** DATASCHEMA *********** --> <element name='DATASCHEMA'> <complexType> <choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element ref='p3p:DATA-DEF'/> <element ref='p3p:DATA-STRUCT'/> <element ref='p3p:EXTENSION'/> </choice> <attribute ref='xml:lang' use='optional'/> </complexType> </element> <element name='DATA-DEF' type='p3p:data-def'/> <element name='DATA-STRUCT' type='p3p:data-def'/> <complexType name='data-def'> <sequence> <element ref='p3p:CATEGORIES' minOccurs='0'/> <element ref='p3p:LONG-DESCRIPTION' minOccurs='0'/> </sequence> <attribute name='name' type='ID' use='required'/> <attribute name='structref' type='anyURI' use='optional'/> <attribute name='short-description' type='string' use='optional'/> </complexType> <!-- *********** CATEGORIES *********** --> <element name='CATEGORIES'> <complexType> <choice maxOccurs='unbounded'> <element name='physical' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='online' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='uniqueid' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='purchase' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='financial' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='computer' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='navigation' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='interactive' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='demographic' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='content' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='state' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='political' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='health' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='preference' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='location' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='government' type='p3p:categories-value'/> <element name='other-category' type='string'/> </choice> </complexType> </element> <complexType name='categories-value'/> <!-- *********** EXTENSION ************ --> <element name='EXTENSION'> <complexType mixed='true'> <choice minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded'> <any minOccurs='0' maxOccurs='unbounded' processContents='skip'/> </choice> <attribute name='optional' use='optional' default='yes' type='p3p:yes_no'/> </complexType> </element> </schema>
This appendix contains the DTD for P3P policy reference files, for P3P policy documents, and for P3P data schema documents. This DTD MAY be used to verify that P3P files are valid (although, note that there are some valid files that may be rejected if checked against the DTD). The DTD is also present as a separate file at the URI http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1.dtd .
<!-- *************** Entities *************** --> <!ENTITY % URI "CDATA"> <!ENTITY % NUMBER "CDATA"> <!-- *********** Policy Reference *********** --> <!-- ************** META ************** --> <!ELEMENT META (EXTENSION*, POLICY-REFERENCES, POLICIES?, EXTENSION*)> <!ATTLIST META xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> <!ATTLIST META xmlns #FIXED "http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <!-- ******* POLICY-REFERENCES ******** --> <!ELEMENT POLICY-REFERENCES (EXPIRY?, POLICY-REF*, HINT*, EXTENSION*)> <!-- *********** POLICY-REF *********** --> <!ELEMENT POLICY-REF (INCLUDE*, EXCLUDE*, METHOD*, EXTENSION*)> <!ATTLIST POLICY-REF about %URI; #REQUIRED > <!-- ************** HINT ************** --> <!ELEMENT HINT EMPTY> <!ATTLIST HINT scope CDATA #IMPLIED path CDATA #IMPLIED > <!-- ************* EXPIRY ************* --> <!ELEMENT EXPIRY EMPTY> <!ATTLIST EXPIRY max-age %NUMBER; #IMPLIED date CDATA #IMPLIED > <!-- ************ POLICIES ************ --> <!ELEMENT POLICIES (EXPIRY?, DATASCHEMA?, POLICY*)> <!ATTLIST POLICIES xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> <!ATTLIST POLICIES xmlns #FIXED "http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <!-- ***** INCLUDE/EXCLUDE/METHOD ***** --> <!ELEMENT INCLUDE (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT EXCLUDE (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT COOKIE-INCLUDE EMPTY> <!ATTLIST COOKIE-INCLUDE name CDATA #IMPLIED value CDATA #IMPLIED domain CDATA #IMPLIED path CDATA #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT COOKIE-EXCLUDE EMPTY> <!ATTLIST COOKIE-EXCLUDE name CDATA #IMPLIED value CDATA #IMPLIED domain CDATA #IMPLIED path CDATA #IMPLIED> <!ELEMENT METHOD (#PCDATA)> <!-- **************** Policy **************** --> <!-- ************* POLICY ************* --> <!ELEMENT POLICY (EXTENSION*, TEST?, ENTITY, ACCESS, DISPUTES-GROUP?, STATEMENT+, EXTENSION*)> <!ATTLIST POLICY name ID #REQUIRED discuri %URI; #REQUIRED opturi %URI; #IMPLIED xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> <!-- ******** TEST ******** --> <!ELEMENT TEST EMPTY> <!-- ************* ENTITY ************* --> <!ELEMENT ENTITY (EXTENSION*, DATA-GROUP, EXTENSION*)> <!-- ************* ACCESS ************* --> <!ELEMENT ACCESS (EXTENSION*, (nonident | all | contact-and-other | ident-contact | other-ident | none), EXTENSION*)> <!ELEMENT nonident EMPTY> <!ELEMENT all EMPTY> <!ELEMENT contact-and-other EMPTY> <!ELEMENT ident-contact EMPTY> <!ELEMENT other-ident EMPTY> <!ELEMENT none EMPTY> <!-- ************ DISPUTES ************ --> <!ELEMENT DISPUTES-GROUP (EXTENSION*, DISPUTES+, EXTENSION*)> <!ELEMENT DISPUTES (EXTENSION*, ( (LONG-DESCRIPTION, IMG?, REMEDIES?, EXTENSION*) | (IMG, REMEDIES?, EXTENSION*) | (REMEDIES, EXTENSION*) )?)> <!ATTLIST DISPUTES resolution-type (service | independent | court | law) #REQUIRED service %URI; #REQUIRED verification CDATA #IMPLIED short-description CDATA #IMPLIED > <!-- ******** LONG-DESCRIPTION ******** --> <!ELEMENT LONG-DESCRIPTION (#PCDATA)> <!-- ************** IMG *************** --> <!ELEMENT IMG EMPTY> <!ATTLIST IMG src %URI; #REQUIRED width %NUMBER; #IMPLIED height %NUMBER; #IMPLIED alt CDATA #REQUIRED > <!-- ************ REMEDIES ************ --> <!ELEMENT REMEDIES (EXTENSION*, (correct | money | law)+, EXTENSION*)> <!ELEMENT correct EMPTY> <!ELEMENT money EMPTY> <!ELEMENT law EMPTY> <!-- *********** STATEMENT ************ --> <!ELEMENT STATEMENT (EXTENSION*, CONSEQUENCE?, ((PURPOSE,RECIPIENT,RETENTION,DATA-GROUP+)| (NON-IDENTIFIABLE,PURPOSE?,RECIPIENT?,RETENTION?,DATA-GROUP*)), EXTENSION*)> <!-- ********** CONSEQUENCE *********** --> <!ELEMENT CONSEQUENCE (#PCDATA)> <!-- ******** NON-IDENTIFIABLE ******** --> <!ELEMENT NON-IDENTIFIABLE (EMPTY)> <!-- ************ PURPOSE ************* --> <!ELEMENT PURPOSE (EXTENSION*, (current | admin | develop | customization | tailoring | pseudo-analysis | pseudo-decision | individual-analysis | individual-decision | contact | historical | telemarketing | other-purpose)+, EXTENSION*)> <!ENTITY % pur_att "required (always | opt-in | opt-out) #IMPLIED"> <!ELEMENT current EMPTY> <!ATTLIST current %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT admin EMPTY> <!ATTLIST admin %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT develop EMPTY> <!ATTLIST develop %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT customization EMPTY> <!ATTLIST customization %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT tailoring EMPTY> <!ATTLIST tailoring %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT pseudo-analysis EMPTY> <!ATTLIST pseudo-analysis %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT pseudo-decision EMPTY> <!ATTLIST pseudo-decision %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT individual-analysis EMPTY> <!ATTLIST individual-analysis %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT individual-decision EMPTY> <!ATTLIST individual-decision %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT contact EMPTY> <!ATTLIST contact %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT profiling EMPTY> <!ATTLIST profiling %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT historical EMPTY> <!ATTLIST historical %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT telemarketing EMPTY> <!ATTLIST telemarketing %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT other-purpose (#PCDATA)> <!ATTLIST other-purpose %pur_att;> <!-- *********** RECIPIENT ************ --> <!ELEMENT RECIPIENT (EXTENSION*, (ours | same | other-recipient | delivery | public | unrelated)+, EXTENSION*)> <!ELEMENT ours (recipient-description*)> <!ELEMENT same (recipient-description*)> <!ATTLIST same %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT other-recipient (recipient-description*)> <!ATTLIST other-recipient %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT delivery (recipient-description*)> <!ATTLIST delivery %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT public (recipient-description*)> <!ATTLIST public %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT unrelated (recipient-description*)> <!ATTLIST unrelated %pur_att;> <!ELEMENT recipient-description (#PCDATA)> <!-- *********** RETENTION ************ --> <!ELEMENT RETENTION (EXTENSION*, (no-retention | stated-purpose | legal-requirement | indefinitely | business-practices), EXTENSION*)> <!ELEMENT no-retention EMPTY> <!ELEMENT stated-purpose EMPTY> <!ELEMENT legal-requirement EMPTY> <!ELEMENT indefinitely EMPTY> <!ELEMENT business-practices EMPTY> <!-- ************** DATA ************** --> <!ELEMENT DATA-GROUP (EXTENSION*, DATA+, EXTENSION*)> <!ATTLIST DATA-GROUP base %URI; "http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/base" > <!ELEMENT DATA (#PCDATA | CATEGORIES)*> <!ATTLIST DATA ref %URI; #REQUIRED optional (yes | no) "no" > <!-- *********** DATA SCHEMA *********** --> <!ELEMENT DATASCHEMA (DATA-DEF | DATA-STRUCT | EXTENSION)*> <!ATTLIST DATASCHEMA xml:lang NMTOKEN #IMPLIED> <!ATTLIST DATASCHEMA xmlns #FIXED "http://www.w3.org/2002/01/P3Pv1"> <!ELEMENT DATA-DEF (CATEGORIES?, LONG-DESCRIPTION?)> <!ATTLIST DATA-DEF name ID #REQUIRED structref %URI; #IMPLIED short-description CDATA #IMPLIED > <!ELEMENT DATA-STRUCT (CATEGORIES?, LONG-DESCRIPTION?)> <!ATTLIST DATA-STRUCT name ID #REQUIRED structref %URI; #IMPLIED short-description CDATA #IMPLIED > <!-- *********** CATEGORIES *********** --> <!ELEMENT CATEGORIES (physical | online | uniqueid | purchase | financial | computer | navigation | interactive | demographic | content | state | political | health | preference | location | government | other-category)+> <!ELEMENT physical EMPTY> <!ELEMENT online EMPTY> <!ELEMENT uniqueid EMPTY> <!ELEMENT purchase EMPTY> <!ELEMENT financial EMPTY> <!ELEMENT computer EMPTY> <!ELEMENT navigation EMPTY> <!ELEMENT interactive EMPTY> <!ELEMENT demographic EMPTY> <!ELEMENT content EMPTY> <!ELEMENT state EMPTY> <!ELEMENT political EMPTY> <!ELEMENT health EMPTY> <!ELEMENT preference EMPTY> <!ELEMENT location EMPTY> <!ELEMENT government EMPTY> <!ELEMENT other EMPTY> <!-- *********** EXTENSION ************ --> <!ELEMENT EXTENSION ANY> <!ATTLIST EXTENSION optional (yes | no) "yes" >
The formal grammar of P3P is given in this specification using a slight modification of [ABNF]. The following is a simple description of the ABNF.
name = (elements)
(
element1 element2)
<a>*<b>element
<a>element
<a>*element
*<b>element
*element
[element]
"string"
or
'string'
Other notations used in the productions are:
/* ... */
This appendix describes the intent of P3P development and recommends guidelines regarding the responsible use of P3P technology. An earlier version was published in the W3C Note "P3P Guiding Principles".
The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P) has been designed to be flexible and support a diverse set of user preferences, public policies, service provider polices, and applications. This flexibility will provide opportunities for using P3P in a wide variety of innovative ways that its designers had not imagined. The P3P Guiding Principles were created in order to: express the intentions of the members of the P3P working groups when designing this technology and suggest how P3P can be used most effectively in order to maximize privacy and user confidence and trust on the Web. In keeping with our goal of flexibility, this document does not place requirements upon any party. Rather, it makes recommendations about 1) what should be done to be consistent with the intentions of the P3P designers and 2) how to maximize user confidence in P3P implementations and Web services. P3P was intended to help protect privacy on the Web. We encourage the organizations, individuals, policy-makers and companies who use P3P to embrace the guiding principles in order to reach this goal.
P3P has been designed to promote privacy and trust on the Web by enabling service providers to disclose their information practices, and enabling individuals to make informed decisions about the collection and use of their personal information. P3P user agents work on behalf of individuals to reach agreements with service providers about the collection and use of personal information. Trust is built upon the mutual understanding that each party will respect the agreement reached.
Service providers should preserve trust and protect privacy by applying relevant laws and principles of data protection and privacy to their information practices. The following is a list of privacy principles and guidelines that helped inform the development of P3P and may be useful to those who use P3P:
In addition, service providers and P3P implementers should recognize and address the special concerns surrounding children's privacy.
Service providers should provide timely and effective notices of their information practices, and user agents should provide effective tools for users to access these notices and make decisions based on them.
Service providers should:
User agents should:
Users should be given the ability to make meaningful choices about the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. Users should retain control over their personal information and decide the conditions under which they will share it.
Service providers should:
User agents should:
Service providers should treat users and their personal information with fairness and integrity. This is essential for protecting privacy and promoting trust.
Service providers should:
User agents should:
While P3P itself does not include security mechanisms, it is intended to be used in conjunction with security tools. Users' personal information should always be protected with reasonable security safeguards in keeping with the sensitivity of the information.
Service providers should:
User agents should:
This specification was produced by the P3P Specification Working Group. The following individuals participated in the P3P Specification Working Group, chaired by Lorrie Cranor (AT&T): Mark Ackerman (University of California, Irvine), Margareta Björksten (Nokia), Eric Brunner (Engage), Joe Coco (Microsoft), Brooks Dobbs (DoubleClick), Rajeev Dujari (Microsoft), Matthias Enzmann (GMD), Patrick Feng (RPI), Aaron Goldfeder (Microsoft), Dan Jaye (Engage), Marit Koehntopp (Privacy Commission of Land Schleswig-Holstein, Germany), Yuichi Koike (NEC/W3C), Yusuke Koizumi (ENC), Daniel LaLiberte (Crystaliz), Marc Langheinrich (NEC/ETH Zurich), Daniel Lim (PrivacyBank), Ran Lotenberg (IDcide), Massimo Marchiori (W3C/MIT/UNIVE), Christine McKenna (Phone.com, Inc.), Mark Nottingham (Akamai), Paul Perry (Microsoft), Jules Polonetsky (DoubleClick), Martin Presler-Marshall (IBM), Joel Reidenberg (Fordham Law School), Dave Remy (Geotrust), Ari Schwartz (CDT), Noboru Shimizu (ENC), Rob Smibert (Jotter Technologies Inc.), Tri Tran (AvenueA), Mark Uhrmacher (DoubleClick), Danny Weitzner (W3C), Michael Wallent (Microsoft), Rigo Wenning (W3C), Betty Whitaker (NCR), Allen Wyke (Engage), Kevin Yen (Netscape), Sam Yen (Citigroup), Alan Zausner (American Express).
The P3P Specification Working Group inherited a large part of the specification from previous P3P Working Groups. The Working Group would like to acknowledge the contributions of the members of these previous groups (affiliations shown are the members' affiliations at the time of their participation in each Working Group).
The P3P Implementation and Deployment Working Group, chaired by Rolf Nelson (W3C) and Marc Langheinrich (NEC/ETH Zurich): Mark Ackerman (University of California, Irvine), Rob Barrett (IBM), Joe Coco (Microsoft), Lorrie Cranor (AT&T), Massimo Marchiori (W3C/MIT), Gabe Montero (IBM), Stephen Morse (Netscape), Paul Perry (Microsoft), Ari Schwartz (CDT), Gabriel Speyer (Citibank), Betty Whitaker (NCR).
The P3P Syntax Working Group, chaired by Steve Lucas (Matchlogic): Lorrie Cranor (AT&T), Melissa Dunn (Microsoft), Daniel Jaye (Engage Technologies), Massimo Marchiori (W3C/MIT), Maclen Marvit (Narrowline), Max Metral (Firefly), Paul Perry (Firefly), Martin Presler-Marshall (IBM), Drummond Reed (Intermind), Joseph Reagle (W3C).
The P3P Vocabulary Harmonization Working Group, chaired by Joseph Reagle (W3C): Liz Blumenfeld (America Online), Ann Cavoukian (Information and Privacy Commission/Ontario), Scott Chalfant (Matchlogic), Lorrie Cranor (AT&T), Jim Crowe (Direct Marketing Association), Josef Dietl (W3C), David Duncan (Information and Privacy Commission/Ontario), Melissa Dunn (Microsoft), Patricica Faley (Direct Marketing Association), Marit Köhntopp (Privacy Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany), Tony Lam (Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner's Office), Tara Lemmey (Narrowline), Jill Lesser (America Online), Steve Lucas (Matchlogic), Deirdre Mulligan (Center for Democracy and Technology), Nick Platten (Data Protection Consultant, formerly of DG XV, European Commission), Ari Schwartz (Center for Democracy and Technology), Jonathan Stark (TRUSTe).
The P3P Protocols and Data Transport Working Group, chaired by Yves Leroux (Digital): Lorrie Cranor (AT&T), Philip DesAutels (Matchlogic), Melissa Dunn (Microsoft), Peter Heymann (Intermind), Tatsuo Itabashi (Sony), Dan Jaye (Engage), Steve Lucas (Matchlogic), Jim Miller (W3C), Michael Myers (VeriSign), Paul Perry (FireFly), Martin Presler-Marshall (IBM), Joseph Reagle (W3C), Drummond Reed (Intermind), Craig Vodnik (Pencom Web Worlds).
The P3P Vocabulary Working Group, chaired by Lorrie Cranor (AT&T): Mark Ackerman (W3C), Philip DesAutels (W3C), Melissa Dunn (Microsoft), Joseph Reagle (W3C), Upendra Shardanand (Firefly).
The P3P Architecture Working Group, chaired by Martin Presler-Marshall (IBM): Mark Ackerman (W3C), Lorrie Cranor (AT&T), Philip DesAutels (W3C), Melissa Dunn (Microsoft), Joseph Reagle (W3C).
Finally, Appendix 7 is drawn from the W3C Note "P3P Guiding Principles", whose signatories are: Azer Bestavros (Bowne Internet Solutions), Ann Cavoukian (Information and Privacy Commission Ontario Canada), Lorrie Faith Cranor (AT&T Labs-Research), Josef Dietl (W3C), Daniel Jaye (Engage Technologies), Marit Köhntopp (Land Schleswig-Holstein), Tara Lemmey (Narrowline; TrustE), Steven Lucas (MatchLogic), Massimo Marchiori (W3C/MIT), Dave Marvit (Fujitsu Labs), Maclen Marvit (Narrowline Inc.), Yossi Matias (Tel Aviv University), James S. Miller (MIT), Deirdre Mulligan (Center for Democracy and Technology), Joseph Reagle (W3C), Drummond Reed (Intermind), Lawrence C. Stewart (Open Market, Inc.).
Change log from the 28 September Last Call Working Draft:
ACCESS
,
DISPUTES-GROUP
, REMEDIES
,
PURPOSE
, RECIPIENT
, RETENTION
,
DATA-GROUP
.POLICY-REF
.META
now uses the extension mechanism (before and/or
after the P3P components), and no more generic markup after the P3P
components (impacts DTD and Schema too).META
, POLICIES
and
DATASCHEMA
.