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United States' Postal Service "Informed Delivery" plan puts consumers at risk

The US Postal Service's new Informed Delivery system has the potential to impact every household in the United States that receives mail. It's important, and there are plenty of privacy issues. The World Privacy Forum wrote extensive comments to the United States Postal Service warning it about certain consumer privacy and security risks of its Informed Delivery service. Here's more information about Informed Delivery, and why it may create new phishing risks.

Consumer experiences of job searching and online reputation

Reputation and privacy -- Pam Dixon spoke at the Southwestern Law School Privacy Conference on the topic of reputational privacy Friday the 22cnd along with Neville Johnson and Paul Tweed. Dixon highlighted three key consumer situations WPF assisted with recently, discussing the employment challenges consumers faced when harmful material was available online during the job search process.

Congressional Testimony: What’s a Consumer to Do? Consumer Perceptions and Expectations of Privacy Online

WPF executive director Pam Dixon testified at a joint subcommittee hearing focused on privacy and the collection and use of online and offline consumer information. Dixon's testimony focused on the new "modern permanent record" and how it is used and created. Dixon said "The merging of offline and online data is creating highly personalized, granular profiles of consumers that affect consumers’ opportunities in the marketplace and in their lives. Consumers are largely unaware of these profiles and their consequences, and they have insufficient legal rights to change things even if they did know." The testimony explored concrete examples of problematic consumer profiling activities.

Digital Signage Privacy Principles for Consumers: Nation's leading consumer groups release new privacy principles

Digital Signage Privacy Principles -- The nation's leading consumer and privacy groups released a set of baseline consumer privacy principles to be included in digital signage networks. The principles were released at the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, where World Privacy Forum executive director Pam Dixon spoke about the principles to a large group of digital signage industry professionals.

Digital Signage Privacy Principles: Critical policies and practices for digital signage networks

Download Digital Signage Privacy Principles (PDF) or Read the Principle below ----- February 25, 2010 New forms of sophisticated digital signage networks are being deployed widely by retailers and others in both public and private spaces. Capabilities range from simple people-counting sensors mounted on doorways to sophisticated, largely invisible facial ...

WPF to speak at FTC Privacy Roundtable

FTC Privacy Roundtable -- Thursday, January 28, WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking at the FTC's Privacy Roundtable about the privacy implications of digital signage networks and will be specifically discussing the new report: The One-Way Mirror Society: Privacy Implications of the New Digital Signage Networks. Few consumers, legislators, regulators, or policy makers are aware of the capabilities of digital signs or of the extent of their use. The technology presents new problems and highlights old conflicts about privacy, public spaces, and the need for a meaningful debate.

WPF Report: One-Way-Mirror Society - Privacy Implications of the new Digital Signage Networks

This 2010 WPF report, The One Way Mirror Society, explores new forms of sophisticated digital signage networks and their privacy implications in the US and other countries. Digital signage networks are being deployed widely by retailers and others in both public and private spaces. From simple people-counting sensors mounted on doorways to sophisticated facial recognition cameras mounted in flat video screens and end-cap displays, digital signage technologies are gathering increasing amounts of detailed information about consumers, their behaviors, and their characteristics.

One-Way-Mirror Society: Introduction - What is digital signage and why care about its privacy implications?

The digital signage networks this report addresses are bi-directional. These networks give information to viewers while they capture information from viewers and send it back to a home base. In the digital signage industry, the new technologies are often compared to the interactive signs from the movie Minority Report. [1] In the movie, large-screen video billboards recognized individual consumers and delivered personalized advertisements to each person. The movie version of the digital signs and billboards relied on an iris scan to customize the ads. Today’s modern digital signs rely on advanced video analytics and sophisticated cameras and sensors.

One-Way-Mirror Society: Overview of key digital signage capabilities in place today

The best way to understand the capabilities of digital signage today and how it is being used is to see the digital signage industry’s newly minted Recommended Code of Conduct for Consumer Tracking Methods (See Appendix A for complete document). This document on consumer tracking methods in digital signage was written and agreed upon entirely by industry members, without any participation by consumer representatives. The document reflects the advances in technology in this area and where the possibilities for abuse lay. The opening of the document reads:

One-Way-Mirror Society: Lower and Medium Privacy Risk Consumer Tracking Technologies

Heat maps and path tracking technologies essentially generate maps of where consumers spend the most time standing and walking in stores. (Figure 2). One product, PathTracker, uses RFID chips for large store tracking, and video tracking technology for smaller stores or sub-areas within stores.

One-Way-Mirror Society: High Privacy Risk Consumer Tracking Technologies

Facial recognition technology was initially developed for security purposes, but it has found a new use in digital signage for marketing and ad targeting purposes. Essentially, the process is that a camera captures an individual’s image, then checks it against algorithms that analyze at least 80 facial characteristics, such as distance between eyes, length of the face, width of the face, depth of eye sockets, and so forth. [48] Layers of algorithms are used to crunch the facial information into determinations about a person’s age bracket, gender, and ethnicity. The next efforts are going toward coding the facial expressions of shoppers to “capture their emotional reactions to in-store environments.” [49]

One-Way-Mirror Society: Consumer Responses to Digital Signage and Privacy Issues

Few consumers are aware that watching a video screen or interacting with a kiosk may mean they are being recorded and having their behavior, gender, age, and ethnicity analyzed. As a result, there has not been a robust public discussion of how consumers feel about these technologies.

One-Way-Mirror Society: What are the specific privacy issues posed by digital signage networks / what risks exist?

Security Camera Footage: Repurposing footage for marketing and profit Perhaps the most egregious repurposing of data is the use of security camera footage for store marketing purposes. From the industry literature, this appears to be an established business practice at this point. It is one that needs to be examined closely.

One-Way-Mirror Society: Recommendations

There is no public awareness of the capabilities of digital signage, and that has to change before for any debate over regulation or legislation can start. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify from other privacy arenas the types of standards that should be considered for users of digital signage. Full recommendations will only be possible at a later stage. Here are some preliminary ideas.

One-Way-Mirror Society: Conclusion

New forms of sophisticated digital sign networks are being deployed widely by retailers and others in both public and private spaces. Few consumers, legislators, regulators, or policy makers are aware of the capabilities of digital signs or of the extent of their use. The technology presents new problems and highlights old conflicts about privacy, public spaces, and the need for a meaningful debate. The privacy problems inherent in digital networks are profound, and to date these issues have not been adequately addressed by anyone.

One-Way-Mirror Society: Appendix A - POPAI Recommended Code of Conduct for Consumer Tracking Methods

The following document is the recommended code of conduct for businesses engaging in consumer tracking. The document is entirely non-binding, and was created entirely by industry participants. The document is reproduced here in full with no changes. Best Practices: Recommended Code of Conduct for Consumer Tracking Methods

FTC Privacy Roundtable: WPF to testify on information brokers

FTC Privacy Roundtable -- WPF executive director Pam Dixon will testify at the FTC Privacy Roundtable about information brokers and commercial data practices and they impact consumers. Dixon will be discussing the business models of data brokers, issues with smart grids, and opt-out problems, among other issues.

World Privacy Forum testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee

Congressional testimony -- WPF executive director Pam Dixon testified at a joint subcommittee hearing focused on privacy and the collection and use of online and offline consumer information. Dixon's testimony focused on the new "modern permanent record" and how it is used and created. Dixon said "The merging of offline and online data is creating highly personalized, granular profiles of consumers that affect consumers’ opportunities in the marketplace and in their lives. Consumers are largely unaware of these profiles and their consequences, and they have insufficient legal rights to change things even if they did know." The testimony explored concrete examples of problematic consumer profiling activities.

Timeline: The evolution of a job scam

Job applicant rights and privacy -- This visual timeline chronicles a year of a job scam. The timeline documents the cities the fake jobs were targeting, dates the jobs posted, the various company names the scam operated under, and the contact names used in the scam. The job scam timeline is documented with screen shots of the job listings and how they looked as posted. The scam is still active.

WHOIS database privacy issues

Online privacy and WHOIS database -- In comments submitted to ICANN's Task Forces 1 and 2 on the WHOIS Database, the World Privacy Forum has asked for tiered access to domain registry information. This would allow domain registrants the ability to keep home phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses private. The WPF has also asked that personal information in the WHOIS database not be made available to marketers.

Consumer fraud alert: job scams

Consumer Alert -- The World Privacy Forum and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse have become aware of a nationwide job scam currently in action. We are advising job seekers to avoid any response to job ads coming from Unk Electronics, Macrocommerce Intersales, and Nanjing Panada Electronics, and to be aware of the high potential for financial fraud and or identity theft if they have already responded to job ads from these companies.