This statement was delivered orally to the FTC in its Open Commission Meeting, held on 18 January 2024.
The World Privacy Forum filed comments regarding the US Federal Trade Commission’s 2023 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding Health Breach Notification. This marks the second set of comments WPF has filed, our first being in 2009 regarding the first iteration of the Health Breach Rule. The comments are technical, and ...
Thank you Chair and Commissioners. The profusion of health apps, websites and digital tools that provide consumers with assistance and insights about their health is a positive development. However, it has come at the cost of increasing privacy risks. One of these risks is that consumers are confused about when and where federal health privacy protections apply to their health information.
The World Privacy Forum provided comments to the FTC regarding its proposed substantive amendments to the Telemarketing Sales Rule (part 310), 87 FR 33677. Generally, WPF supports nearly all of the proposed changes in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. However, we are concerned about three specific areas: The expansion of ...
The FTC held an historic open FTC Commission meeting, during which the Chair and Commissioners conducted their business openly and also provided an opportunity for public comments. The World Privacy Forum was selected to provide a public comment, which focused on the need to update the Health Breach Notification Rule.
We are extremely pleased and heartened that after years of requesting that the FTC make compliance reports public, that the Commission has agreed to do so with the Everalbum settlement. WPF submitted comments regarding the Everalbum proposed settlement to the US Federal Trade Commission on February 23, 2021. Today, the ...
The World Privacy Forum has submitted comments to the FTC regarding its proposed consent order In the Matter of Flo Health, Inc. requesting that the FTC conduct further analysis regarding the FTC Health Data Breach Rule and its potential applicability to the alleged unconsented sharing of women's pregnancy, menstruation, mental ...
The World Privacy Forum submitted comments to the US Federal Trade Commission regarding its proposed consent order regarding In the Matter of Everalbum, Inc . The FTC alleges that Everalbum misrepresented to its users the circumstances in which the company would utilize face recognition on its users’ photos. The Commission’s ...
The FTC has proposed a crucially important settlement with a photo app developer, Everalbum Inc., which the FTC says “deceived consumers about its use of facial recognition technology and its retention of the photos and videos of users who deactivated their accounts.” The proposed FTC settlement will require the company ...
While the $5 billion fine in the Facebook settlement has received a lot of attention, it is the compliance requirements that come with it that are of particular interest. Also noteworthy are the details in the complaint about how Facebook has handled facial recognition information and phone numbers.
The FTC recently announced a “phantom debt broker” settlement. Phantom debt is debt that has been fabricated and then treated as if it was real debt that could be collected from consumers. This case gives a clear view into practices that form the modus operandi for a newly emerging type of identity theft.
The World Privacy Forum has published its discussion draft privacy bill that provides rules of the road for standards setting in the area of data privacy and security. The discussion draft sets forth a pathway to creating voluntary consensus standards to facilitate granular and contextual standard-setting focused on privacy and ...
The World Privacy Forum has submitted a set of key comments to the US Federal Trade Commission regarding privacy frameworks and governance. The comments introduce the idea of knowledge governance and propose frameworks that will work to solve the serious privacy challenges we face in complex data ecosystems.
The FTC finalized an expanded settlement with Uber, Inc. regarding the company's data security practices. According to the FTC complaint, in the midst of the Commission's original investigation, Uber experienced a second serious breach and waited more than a year after learning of the breach before informing the public or ...
In comments to the FTC regarding a proposed revised consent decree with Uber Technologies, Inc., WPF urged the FTC to clarify what the term "assessment" means in the context of a consent decree with a company. The comments note that the requirement for an assessment is not the same as ...
WPF's ED Pam Dixon will be presenting new research on medical identity theft and on biometrics at the FTC's Informational Harms Workshop, to be held in Washington DC December 12, 2017. Dixon will be presenting on Panel I, Injuries 101 . More about the event: The event begins Dec. 12, ...
Television maker VIZIO is paying $2.2 million in penalties to settle charges after the FTC and the New Jersey Attorney General's office brought a complaint against the company for violating its customers' privacy. The complaint against VIZIO stated that the company collected detailed information on millions of its customers TV viewing habits without their express consent, and that VIZIO facilitated something called "data appending," which is when even more detailed information is added to existing customer profiles.
Update for February 29, 2016: The US and the European Commission have released new details about the proposed Privacy Shield program. We have published a new post about this release here . Briefly, the US Department of Commerce has released a 132-page package containing the program principles, letters from the ...
Every other year, the US Federal Trade Commission issues a report about the national Do Not Call registry to Congress. The FTC has recently released its newest report , and by all measures, the Do Not Call registry is still strong and growing. It is not without its snags, however. ...
At the World Privacy Forum, consumers frequently approach us and ask us where they can complain about privacy and security issues. It is not unusual for us to hear about issues like online scams and phishing schemes that cross country borders. The Econsumer.gov website is designed to help consumers with ...
WPF urges FTC to focus on consumers' ability to control their digital exhaust and statistical parity for big data era At the FTC workshop on Big Data September 15, Big Data: Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?, panelists including the World Privacy Forum discussed legal and ethical frameworks that are applicable ...
The Federal Trade Commission has announced its panelist roster and final agenda for its upcoming workshop, “ Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? . ” The workshop is going to be an important and thoughtful discussion about big data and privacy issues, and will be taking place on ...
Forget worrying about loyalty cards or programs: it’s the everyday purchases you make tied to your name with a debit or credit card that can land you on data brokers’ lists. That is one of the many facts that the new FTC report on data brokers sets forth. The report offers a high-level analysis with establishing new fact patterns about the industry based on the Commission’s investigation of nine major data brokers. Overall, we find things to like in the report, but we wish the FTC had gone further in some areas. Here are some of the high points that stood out to us.
Mobile messaging app Snapchat, which promised its users ephemeral, disappearing picture and video messages, has settled FTC charges that pics and videos sent through its app weren't as ephemeral as the company promised. According to the FTC, Snapchat transmitted users' location data, and collected users' address books without notice or ...
It sounds so innocent: the Tap Pet Hotel app for kids. But one mother complained to the FTC that her child tapped up $2,600 of in-app purchases up while using the app. Other parents complained about unauthorized purchases by children of up to $500 for apps like Dragon Story and ...
