Westport, CT (June 22, 2000) - PCIX.org, the industry organization for the Permission-based Customer Information eXchange network, welcomes P3P but, like many, believes that a technology protocol misses the point of addressing consumer's privacy concerns.

Where PCIX.org is dedicated to "Defining the Opt-in Future of the Information eXchange Economy", P3P mostly addresses the display of privacy policies, not how vendors handle customers' personal information.

"PCIX is a market-based solution for the privacy concerns of consumers. PCIX is not an attempt to avoid the real need of putting customers in firm control of their personal information. However, it also works for vendors by giving them all the advantages of knowing their customer, which means more sales", says Elizabeth Knudsen, Program Manager of PCIX.org. "Face it, the world is changing to opt-in. Customers are in control and upcoming laws will make it not only good business sense, but a legal requirement. That doesn't mean that vendors shouldn't know who their customers are or what they want. Quite the contrary, customer loyalty is the single biggest competitive advantage a vendor can have in the online (or wireless) world. PCIX gives vendors that advantage".

PCIX, Permission-based Customer Information eXchange, encompasses all the aspects of responsible and effective use of customer information. PCIX is a fair, customer-centric approach to dealing with personally identifying information. It is based on the principles of Notice, Access, Choice, Security and History. PCIX provides easy, open-source information definitions for customer, vendors, ad agencies and other third parties to use when exchanging information or designing marketing strategies. On top of that, PCIX is a co-op network of third party data services, advertisers and infomediaries (called PCIX Service Providers) who can inter-operate (using pciXML) to exchange opt-in customer lists in order to reach the largest target market.