Increase consumer trust in your WebSphere Commerce site by deploying a P3P policy

Level: Intermediate

Mike Smit (mikes@ca.ibm.com), Center for Advanced Studies Student, IBM
Terry Chu (terrychu@ca.ibm.com), Software Developer, IBM
Darshanand Khusial (dkhusial@ca.ibm.com), Lead Architect, IBM

23 Nov 2005

Privacy is a growing concern with consumers who shop online. This article explores how Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) policies can help your organization increase consumer trust in your WebSphere Commerce store and ensure the proper functioning of your store's cookies. A P3P policy prevents cookie-blocking software from inconveniencing your customers, while ensuring that privacy-conscious customers are aware of your commitment to their privacy. It can help encourage your customers to trust you, which can lead to more satisfied customer, increased purchases, and a greater willingness to provide accurate personal information.

In this article

This article covers the following tasks:

• Writing, deploying, and testing a P3P policy to your WebSphere Commerce site.
  
  
• Customizing a provided sample policy file to match your business policies and practices.
  

Downloads

Description	Name	Size	Download method
Article in PDF format	0511_smit_p3p_policy.pdf	.55 MB	FTP|HTTP
Code sample	WCTemplate.p3p	7 KB	FTP|HTTP

	Information about download methods			Get Adobe® Reader®

Resources

• Data: Lost, Stolen or Strayed. A news article on credit card data being lost or stolen.
  
  
• Ernst & Young, P3P Dashboard Report, January 2004. This is the most recent version of Ernst & Young's report, measuring the adoption rate of P3P on the most popular domains.
  
  
• P3P v1.0 Specification. The official specification of the P3P standard, which includes detailed descriptions of all P3P elements as well as DTDs and XSDs.
  
  
• P3P Deployment Guide. This official guide contains detailed instructions for different deployment alternatives on a number of different HTTP servers.
  
  
• W3C’s P3P page. This page includes a number of P3P resources and information about the future of P3P.
  
  
• WebSphere Commerce 5.6 Information Center. This Information Center contains comprehensive product documentation and tutorials.
  
  
• developerWorks WebSphere Commerce zone. This site contains technical articles and how-to information for developers.
  
  

• WebSphere Commerce discussion forums

About the authors

	Mike Smit is a Master of Computer Science candidate at Dalhousie University's Privacy and Security Lab. He collaborates with IBM through the Toronto Lab Center for Advanced Studies in Canada.

	Terry Chu is the test lead for the WebSphere Commerce runtime infrastructure group at the IBM Toronto lab. He has a Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree from the University of Toronto, Canada.

	Darshanand Khusial is the lead architect for WebSphere Commerce in the IBM Software Group at the IBM Toronto lab. He has a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Toronto, Canada.

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