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What's New

 

New Consumer Resource: A Patient's Guide to HIPAA

A Patient's Guide to HIPAA is a comprehensive look at how to use HIPAA in practical, strategic ways to protect privacy. The guide is user-friendly, direct, and easy to navigate. Published March 31, 2009.

 

Major reports:

Privacy in the Clouds

The World Privacy Forum's newest report examines the privacy and confidentiality issues of cloud computing that have been largely overlooked to date. It is a thorough analysis with policy findings. Privacy in the Clouds: Risks to Privacy and Confidentiality from Cloud Computing was written by Robert Gellman for the World Privacy Forum. Cloud computing tips for consumers are also available. Published February 23, 2009.

 

Medical ID Theft

The World Privacy Forum researched and published the first major report about medical identity theft and brought this crime to the attention of the public for the first time. Our May 2006 report documents and discusses medical identity theft and what makes it unique. While the financial forms of identity theft are well-known at this point, the medical forms of ID theft are not. The medical forms if ID theft have unique harms associated with them, and under HIPAA victims have gaps in recourse for help recovering from the crime. The World Privacy Forum has also published substantial resources for victims in the form of a groundbreaking FAQ for victims, again, the first to be published on this issue.

Our medical identity theft page contains the report, FAQ for victims, consumer tips, and best practices for healthcare providers. See also: Red Flag Rules report, which is available on the medical identity theft page.

 

Personal Health Records

The World Privacy Forum has published a substantive legal analysis that looks at what happens when health care files and medical records are kept at businesses not subject to the Federal medical privacy rule, HIPAA. This analysis is the first the WPF is aware of on this particular issue. The report was published February 2008 and is available on our Personal Health Record page: http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/personal_health_records.html and here.

 

Online Behavioral Advertising

The World Privacy Forum issued a new report on the Network Advertising Initiative November 2, 2007. The report documents and analyzes the history and operations of the 7-year old NAI self-regulatory initiative, which was designed to allow consumers to opt-out of tracking by behavioral advertisers. The report is available here, and at the FTC web site.

 

Other news or new content:
 
August 2010

WPF files comments on critical SEC regulatory proposal

The World Privacy Forum filed comments critical of the SEC regulatory proposal regulations that would release an unprecedented amount of financial details about individual borrowers through the EDGAR database. The WPF was joined by other privacy, consumer, and human rights organizations in its comments, which focused on the privacy issues with the proposed regulations. Pam Dixon, executive director of the WPF, stated in the comments that the SEC's new regulations would "Place on the public record and online the largest amount of personal financial information about borrowers ever disclosed, including information never before made public." The comments also note that the SEC's plan greatly increases the risk of identity theft for individual borrowers whose information will be released publicly.

Read the SEC comments

 

Upcoming Events:

 

WPF will be speaking at the following events:

 

  • CFP, San Jose, June 15-18, 2010.
  • CalPSAB, Sacramento, June 9, 2010.
  • Digital Signage Expo, Las Vegas Convention Center, February 25, 2010. Panel on digital signage and privacy.
  • Federal Trade Commission Privacy Roundtable, January 28, 2010, Berkeley, California.
  • CalPSAB, January 13, 2010, San Francisco.
  • Federal Trade Commission Privacy Roundtable, December 7, 2009, Washington DC.
  • Congressional Testimony, November 19, 2009, Executive Director Pam Dixon.
  • Annual ID Theft Passport Advisory Council Meeting, (I-PAC), Presentation/briefing on medical identity theft, Sacramento, Nov. 5, 2009.
  • Center for Ethics in Science and Technology, Identity theft trends and news, Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, San Diego, Nov. 4, 2009, panel.
  • New York University Law School, October 2, 2009. Panel on safe harbors and online privacy.
  • CalPSAB, September 16, 2009, Sacramento.
  • California Bar Annual Meeting, September 12, 2009, San Diego. Panel on global privacy issues.
  • NNEDV Training of Teachers, August 2009, San Francisco. Workshops.
  • CalPSAB, June 29, 2009.
  • Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialog, June 7-10 2009, Brussels, Belgium. Presentation on Cloud Computing.
  • California Western School of Law, April 2, 2009, San Diego, class lecture on health information technology and privacy.
  • Health Privacy Summit, April 2009, Los Angeles.
  • NNEDV, March 2009, San Antonio Texas.
  • CalPSAB, March 2009, Oakland, California.
  • World Congress, February 23 2009, La Costa, California.
  • Congressional Internet Caucus, Jan. 14, 2009, Washington DC.
  • More WPF events ....

 

Miscellaneous new items of note:

 

  • HIPAA Updates: Courtesy of the Health Information Privacy/Security Alert, HIPAA enforcement updates are available free of charge at the web site <http://www.melamedia.com/>.