While the Privacy Finder Privacy Policy search engine only works for an estimated 15% of the top 5000 websites, it is a useful tool to find websites that comply with a stated privacy preference level (low, medium, high or custom) based on a P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) standard for creating machine readable policies.

You chose the search engine the Privacy Finder will use; put your search term in the dialog box, select your Privacy Preference Threshold Level and the results of the search are provided. If the search comes back with a website that has a P3P compliant privacy policy, a “privacy meter” is shown. The number of green boxes in the “privacy meter” shows how closely the privacy policy matches up with the privacy preference level set when doing the search. A link next to the search results brings another page neatly and succinctly showing why the privacy policy does or does not match the preference level and another link to the sites entire policy.

The P3P standard has been around since 2002, but it hasn't really caught on with the web community at large for a number of reasons:

-Some argue it's too complex
-Non code compliance does not necessarily mean poor privacy standards for a company
-There are currently no laws which require a company to comply specifically with a privacy policy
-Poor support from the web browser community

These issues do not remove the need for companies to provide clearer explanations of how it handles a customer’s information and P3P, while not perfect certainly is better than no standard. What privacy finder does is present the compliant privacy policy to the consumer in an easy to read and standardized output, giving consumers more information to make more informed choices.

For more information:
http://www.privacyfinder.org/
http://www.w3.org/P3P/
http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/