Some good news about Internet Explorer 6?

June 17, 2001 5:37 AM

Some good news about Internet Explorer 6? IE6, scheduled to be released in August, will be the first browser to support a new privacy standard called Platform Privacy Preferences, or P3P, which will allow surfers to automatically determine whether a Web site collects personally identifiable information and opt out of the data collection.
posted by tranquileye (15 comments total)

hell yeah!

where are all the anti-IE fanboys now? huh? where?

wrestling with all the spam in their mailboxes i bet.

:P
posted by jcterminal at 9:25 AM on June 17, 2001

I've been using the 6 beta for a couple months now. Other than it destroying my outlook so I have no subject lines with plain-text messages (something they haven't bothered to fix yet!) I like it fine.
posted by revbrian at 9:30 AM on June 17, 2001

Microsoft is going to protect our privacy?

If you believe that, I gotta bridge to sell you, cheap...
posted by mathowie at 9:31 AM on June 17, 2001

Aw, c'mon Matt - give Microsoft a little props for doing something right (for a change)
posted by owillis at 9:37 AM on June 17, 2001

Something to think about.

Something to chuckle about.
posted by NsJen at 9:46 AM on June 17, 2001

All I know is that they expect sites to shell out money to get a P3P format xml privacy file.

IE 6 Privacy FAQ
w3c.org P3P
Using P3P on your site
posted by riffola at 10:58 AM on June 17, 2001

If Microsoft came out with a $500 plugin to verify that it was "MS compliant", I have a sinking feeling that people would actually pay it.

If people didn't, they could simply make "non-believer" websites have a neon green flashing titlebar, which would in turn cause businesses to plunk down the cash to turn off the annoyance on their clients browsers.

It sounds horrible, but it's not so different than what they're doing with this and other initiatives.
posted by jragon at 12:21 PM on June 17, 2001

The main thing I've noticed about the "privacy" stuff in IE6 is that it likes to complain about standard everyday ad banners because those are "third parties."

I'm also not too pleased about IE6 making it easier for the casual user to (cough) "borrow" images off your site with a single click.
posted by Foosnark at 12:50 PM on June 17, 2001

When MS did a demo on IE6 and P3P for congressional staffers last month they mentioned that, P3P notwithstanding, MS could still share information with its affiliates and their advertisers, including MSN, MSNBC and other folks.
posted by thescoop at 2:34 PM on June 17, 2001

What's wrong with that, Foosnark? If you put it on a web server, it's a public resource.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 4:51 PM on June 17, 2001

Great! So even though edgecase.org has a copyright notice on the bottom, I can "borrow" that image wherever I want? Thanks, Microsoft!

(Nothing personal against edgecase, Mars - just using an example.)
posted by hijinx at 4:58 PM on June 17, 2001

hey foosnark, i guess you've never right-clicked on an image?
posted by jcterminal at 5:31 PM on June 17, 2001

ANAGRAM - MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER = FREEMEN, EXERT CLITORIS, PRONTO!
posted by swell at 7:55 PM on June 17, 2001

One too many E's in that anagram. But otherwise, that's pretty swell.
posted by ktheory at 9:01 PM on June 17, 2001

Hmmm, does anyone else smell something fishy?

Naaaaaaah....
posted by fooljay at 10:44 PM on June 17, 2001