The World Privacy Forum joined the US PIRG, the National Consumer Law Center and other signatories in a joint letter to the US Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding the recent Experian data security breach. The letter asks key questions about the breach, and requests the ...
WPF's Executive Director Pam Dixon has been named to the editorial board of Technology Science, a new academic journal from Harvard University's Data Privacy Lab, led by Dr. Latanya Sweeney. The new journal focuses on the intersection of technology and its various impacts on society. The journal is examining this topic in breadth and depth, explaining on its web site: "The scientific study of technology-society clashes is a cross-disciplinary pursuit, so papers in Technology Science may come from any of many possible disciplinary traditions, including but not limited to social science, computer science, political science, law, economics, policy, or statistics." more ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 15, 2015 San Diego — Pam Dixon, Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum, has been named to an OECD Advisory Group that will help guide the development of the draft OECD Council recommendations on privacy-protective approaches for the use of health data. This work will ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 2, 2015 San Diego -- Pam Dixon will be the commenter for a scholarly paper at the annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference to be held this year in Berkeley, California. "It is an honor to be invited to be the commenter for a paper to be ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 5, 2015 Berlin, Germany -- WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon is presenting today at Euroforum to a distinguished audience of European Data Protection Commissioners and other privacy experts. She will be discussing the Scoring of America report and key solutions for the issues predictive analytics and ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 17, 2015 San Diego - WPF’s Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking about global privacy at the Southwestern Law School’s Privacy Conference. Dixon will be focusing on privacy in Asia, trends in the EU, and big data policies globally. "This is a critical time in ...
March 2, 2015 San Diego -- WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting back-to-back workshops for the National Network to End Domestic Violence on how those working with this vulnerable population group can be skillful in handling and navigating health privacy issues. The conference will be in New Orleans ...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 12, 2015 San Diego -- What should a parent or adult student do when a school asks for sensitive health information? What happens when a school offers a health clinic for treatment? What protects all of the sensitive health information at schools? This issue has been ...
We are delighted that our 2014 report, The Scoring of America , was discussed in the New York Times over the weekend. The Scoring of America was the first major report to discuss, analyze, and rigorously document the secret scores that determine many key aspects of Americans' financial, educational, health, ...
The World Privacy Forum will be speaking about medical and health privacy rights in the Universal Periodic Review as part of the Civil Society Consultation for the United States. The UPR is an important cyclical process run under the auspices of the UN Human Rights Council. The last UPR was ...
Big Data and its potential for inclusion and exclusion was on center stage this past September as the FTC held a day-long workshop with experts from industry, technology, privacy, civil liberties, and academia. World Privacy Forum's Executive Director Pam Dixon, a panelist at the event, spoke about Big Data and privacy, emphasizing several key points, including the need for statistical parity, fairness, and the need for keeping existing consumer protection regulation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 10, 2014 San Diego -- The World Privacy Forum is urging parents and college students to exercise their right to "opt out" of schools sharing their personal directory information with third parties. "The beginning of the school year is a key time when the school information ...
WPF's happenings and news update for August 8, 2014 ….
Here is an update on some of the stories in privacy over the past few months. For a complete list, see our full World Privacy Forum in the news page.
We have updated our popular Top Ten Opt Out list with new links and additional information. From key data brokers to credit cards, If you are wondering where to start to get off of lists and whisk your sensitive information out of circulation, we have distilled the most important opt outs to a manageable size. We have included the key opt outs that we ourselves practice with links and tips.
February 3, 2014 Washington, D.C. -- Senator Rockefeller sent six hard-hitting and precedent-setting letters to data brokers today. This was the Senator's direct follow-up to the information WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon revealed in her December 2013 data broker testimony at the Senate Commerce Committee, which Sen. Rockefeller chairs. Rockefeller, ...
For Immediate Release January 30, 2014 San Diego & Washington, D.C. -- The World Privacy Forum published a new report today that helps patients understand and use the new HIPAA right to restrict disclosure of their medical information to health plans when treatment is paid for out of pocket in ...
January 15, 2014 : Pam Dixon will be talking about how some health kiosks that measure blood pressure turn around and share lead information from the consumers using the kiosks with insurance companies. Tune in to NPR's All Things Considered to hear Pam Dixon discuss the privacy risks of health ...
January 2, 2014 -- WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon was a guest on CBS KNX 1070 in Los Angeles this morning talking about the Snapchat data breach, the Target data breach, and what to do to prevent privacy snafus.
Washington, D.C. -- Pam Dixon will be testifying before the Senate Commerce Committee today at 2:30 pm Eastern. The hearing, held by Senator Rockefeller, focuses on data brokers, what information they are collecting from consumers, and what they are doing with the information. The hearing will take place after a ...
San Diego, November 18, 2013 -- WPF filed comments today asking The National Institutes of Health to make changes to its draft Genomic Data Sharing Policy for sharing, for research purposes, of large-scale human and nonhuman genomic data. The World Privacy Forum comments focus on human genomic privacy. "We are ...
San Diego -- 15 November, 2013: The General Accounting Office (GAO) issued its long-awaited report on data brokers, INFORMATION RESELLERS: Consumer Privacy Framework Needs to Reflect Changes in Technology and the Marketplace. The report discusses key World Privacy Forum testimony and research. "We are pleased with the GAO report," said Pam Dixon, Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum. "In particular, we are glad the GAO highlighted our work calling for a stop to the selling of people's sensitive medical and health information for marketing purposes. This is a practice that is causing great harm, the GAO made the right call in pointing out new controls are needed." This press release includes links to the GAO report, to Dixon's Congressional testimony, and to the WPF report discussed by the GAO.
We are delighted with <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/30/pf/government-data-broker/index.html/?p=2129">CNN's coverage</a> of our new report on data brokers.
Today the World Privacy Forum published a report discussing the US federal government's use of commercial data brokers, the implications for that usage, and what needs to be done to address privacy problems. The report argues that the government must bring itself fully to heel in the area of privacy, explaining that when government outsources its data needs to commercial data brokers, it needs to also attach the privacy standards it would have been held to if it had collected the data itself. Outsourcing can no longer be an excuse for evading privacy obligations.
Today the World Privacy Forum published the first of a series of new tips for users of Facebook, Facebook Privacy FAQs. “We are publishing online privacy tips for Facebook users in bite-size pieces so people can decipher the complex Facebook privacy settings and make meaningful changes and choices,” said Pam Dixon. “We are finding that too many consumers are confused about what the choices mean and how to make them.”
