At RBC Financial Group, we are committed to ensuring the
protection of our customers' privacy and personal information.
To this end, we have deployed a technology known as Platform
for Privacy Preferences (P3P) within some of our Canadian
Web sites.
What is P3P?
The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) is an emerging new standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to help Internet users gain more control over how their personal information is collected and used when visiting commercial Web sites. It has been designed to help users understand how individual Web sites collect and use their personal information while providing organizations with a standardized format with which to explain their privacy policies to visitors.
How does P3P work?
Simply put, P3P delivers automated functionality to both users and to enterprises that host commercial Web sites. Individuals use P3P to select and set personal privacy preferences on their browser or relative add-on utility software while companies use it to encode privacy statements within the body of their Web site.
Once enabled, P3P allows for a completely transparent Internet
experience. Using machine language, the individual's browser
or utility software communicates directly with each Web site
visited to interpret its posted privacy policies and determine
whether or not it conforms to the individual's selected privacy
preferences. Should the browser identify a non-conforming
Web site, it will display alerts to the user.
Taking advantage of P3P
P3P can only function if your browser supports the P3P feature
or if you have acquired relative add-on utility software,
and if P3P privacy statements have been previously written
into the Web sites you visit. Microsoft's Internet Explorer
(I.E.) 6.0 and Netscape 7.00 both support P3P. It is expected
that future versions will have expanded P3P functionality
and that similar functionality will be introduced in other
browsers in the future.
At present, P3P is an emerging industry standard. Until
such time as it is routinely deployed within commercial Web
sites, users with P3P-enabled browsers may have difficulty
accessing customized features or services on some Web sites.
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