MacVillage Cares About Your Privacy

MacVillage announced last week that they are full compliant with the most recent P3P specification, the "The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project." The P3P specification is designed to protect the privacy and confidentiality of those visiting a Web site by outlining how personal information should be handled. According to MacVillage:

MacVillage.net today announced that is has become the 32nd known web site to become fully compliant with the P3P spec at Dec 15, 2000 (CR). ?Only 64 sites are known to have any compliance with these new privacy standards. ?Half of these 64 web sites are not compliant with the latest standards.

According to the World Wide Web Consortiumis (W3C) P3P home page (http://www.w3.org/P3P/): "The Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, is emerging as an industry standard providing a simple, automated way for users to gain more control over the use of personal information on Web sites they visit. At its most basic level, P3P is a standardized set of multiple-choice questions, covering all the major aspects of a Web siteis privacy policies. Taken together, they present a clear snapshot of how a site handles personal information about its users. P3P-enabled Web sites make this information available in a standard, machine-readable format. P3P enabled browsers can "read" this snapshot automatically and compare it to the consumeris own set of privacy preferences. P3P enhances user control by putting privacy policies where users can find them, in a form users can understand, and, most importantly, enables users to act on what they see."

MacVillage.net strongly believes in the privacy of its users, and has become one of the first web sites to become compliant with this new privacy standard. ?Hopefully the word will get out that visitors have a right to know how their information is being used.

MacVillage.net does not believe in distributing information. ?All personal information that is given to MacVillage.net is used internally by MacVillage.net and itis service providers (who are also under contract not to disclose information to third parties without consent of the visitor.) ?This personal information is used for tasks such as demographic information, and for verification purposes. ?If a member looses account info, they can then give some of their information to help prove their identity. MacVillage.net members email addresses are never sold to third parties, but are sent newsletters once a month. MacVillage.net stores "Non identifiable" information such as your browser, OS, country of origin, ISP, etc. so that it can decide how to best improve the site. These statistics are not for a particular user, but are kept for general site traffic patterns.

You can find more information on all of their services and features at the MacVillage Web site.