P3P Adoption on E-Commerce Web sites: A Survey and Analysis

Privacy is an increasingly important issue for Internet users, especially in the world of e-commerce, where they must disclose large amounts of personal information to make purchases. Various privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) are currently available, including the platform for privacy preferences project, privacy seals, and human-readable privacy policies. In particular, P3P has been the subject of considerable interest; however, it's also highly dependent on the symbiotic deployment of P3P user agents and policies on vendors' Web sites. Internet users and vendors must commit time and resources to deploy P3P agents or policies, and thus require evidence that the technology won't stagnate or become obsolete. In this article, we survey the current rate of P3P deployment within the e-commerce industry. We also examine P3P's usefulness as a PET, using Everett Rogers' drivers of innovation adoption