TACD — The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), which WPF is a member of, has sent a letter regarding Internet privacy to a Congressional subcommittee explaining that European privacy controls are not burdensome, but rather of key importance. The TACD is a forum of more than 80 US and European consumer groups and represents several hundred million consumers in North America and the United States.
Data broker opt out issue — The World Privacy Forum sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking it to look into four companies offering online consumers the ability to opt out, then asking those consumers to use a variety of postal-mail-based methods to do so.
Medical privacy — Some recent articles about the sale of patients’ prescription histories to insurance companies have raised many consumer questions about this practice. Ingenix and Milliman — two companies engaged in this practice — were the subject of a Federal Trade Commission enforcement action which was published for comment in September 2007. The World Privacy Forum provided formal comments to the Federal Trade Commission last year about this enforcement action; the WPF sought to have all affected consumers notified of adverse actions taken based on the information, and asked the FTC to modify its enforcement action to include an appropriate monetary penalty against the two companies.
We request that the Federal Trade Commission take immediate steps to correct the credit bureaus’ implementation of the Web site www.annualcreditreport.com. As you know, Congress mandated that the credit bureaus create a central repository for consumers to access their credit report free of charge on a once-per-year basis.