Privacy News

FTC drops Google WiFi case

Online privacy -- The FTC sent a letter to Google today expressing concern about the company's privacy practices, but at the same time, the FTC informed Google that it was dropping its investigation of the Street View WiFi case. The FTC wrote: "FTC staff has concerns about the internal policies and procedures that gave rise to this data collection. ... the company did not discover that it had been collecting payload data until it responded to a request for information from a data protection authority." The FTC told Google it should develop and implement procedures to properly collect, dispose of, and maintain information.

Good privacy decision in Amazon v. Lay fight to keep customer information private

Resource | case file -- Amazon.com filed a lawsuit in April to fight the North Carolina Department of Revenue's request for detailed information on Amazon.com customers. The North Carolina tax department requested Amazon.com to hand over "all information for all sales to customers with a North Carolina shipping address" between 2003 to 2010. In the decision, Seattle, Washington U.S. District Court Judge Marsha J. Pechman wrote, "Citizens are entitled to receive information and ideas through books, films, and other expressive materials anonymously." She also stated that "The fear of government tracking and censoring one\'s reading, listening, and viewing choices chills the exercise of First Amendment rights." This is an important decision for privacy rights, and online privacy in particular.

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.

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.

FTC issues final rule on health data breaches

Health data breach rulemaking -- The Federal Trade Commission has issued its final Health Breach Notification Rule for vendors of Personal Health Records and related entities, as required under ARRA, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The initial proposed Health Breach Notification Rule was generally thoughtful and thorough. The World Privacy Forum submitted extensive comments on the proposed rule both supporting parts of it and making some suggestions for changes. The FTC incorporated several specific WPF suggestions into the final rule. In particular, the FTC incorporated the applicability of the rule to foreign entities with U.S. customers (Final Rule p. 17), and the applicability of the rule to search engines appearing on Personal Health Record web sites (Final Rule p. 34). The new rule will be published in the Federal Register shortly; until then, it is available at the FTC web site. Also available is a form that entities covered under this rule can use to report data breaches to the FTC. The Health Breach Notification Rule will be effective 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, and full compliance with the rule will be required beginning 180 days after publication.

California Health Information Identification data base California CHILI database now online

Resource -- A substantial new resource for individuals seeking to research California laws and regulations regarding health information has come online. The CHILI database is a project of the California Office of Health Information Integrity, and has interfaced with the California Privacy and Security Advisory Board, which the World Privacy Forum co-chairs. The CHILI database can be searched by HIPAA section, California Code section, California health information law keywords, or by statutory scheme.

New telemarketing rules take effect today: more power over pre-recorded telemarketing calls

Telemarketing | Top Ten Opt Out List -- Beginning today, pre-recorded telemarketing phone calls must come with an easy opt-out for consumers. If a pre-recorded telemarketing call is left on an answering machine, it must also include opt-out information. These rules will apply to telemarketers already subject to the Federal Trade Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule and Do Not Call List. There are some exemptions to the rule. For more details about the changes, see our Top Ten Opt Out List, which has been updated with the new information.

News Release and Event Announcement: International Privacy and Security Conference 2008

This conference is convened for the purpose of gaining a deepened mutual understanding of privacy and security approaches cross-culturally, with the conference providing an international forum for discussing and understanding the different concepts of privacy and security in the US, Asia, and the EU. Through sharing of current practices and ideas, the participants will explore possible bridges between what these concepts mean in different countries both now and looking to the future as well.

World Privacy Forum, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, EPIC, and other consumer groups urge Google to post a link to its privacy policy from its home page

Internet privacy -- The World Privacy Forum, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and EPIC were joined by California-based EFF, the ACLU of Northern California, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of California and other national groups in asking Google's CEO Eric Schmidt to provide a prominent link to the Google privacy policy directly from its home page. Google has recently been criticized for not providing a link to its privacy policy from its home page, as the California Online Privacy Protection Act requires. The groups noted that linking to a privacy policy on a home page is considered a widespread best practice.

New FTC statistics affirm World Privacy Forum's 2006 Medical Identity Theft report; give first robust medical identity theft statistics

Medical identity theft update -- The Federal Trade Commission released its national ID theft survey, which for the first time contains statistics specific to medical identity theft. According to the FTC report (p. 21), 3 percent of all identity theft victims in 2005 were victims of medical identity theft, which means of 8.3 million ID theft victims, approximately 250,000 people were victimized by medical identity theft in that year alone. The purpose of the World Privacy Forum 2006 report was to prove that medical identity theft existed, and was already occurring in large numbers. At the time the report was published, the crime of medical identity theft had not been specifically studied, nor was it understood to exist. The FTC statistics abundantly affirm the thesis and conclusions of the WPF report.

Stop REAL ID

REAL ID -- REAL ID is a national ID card program. Currently, the Department of Homeland Security is accepting public comments on the REAL ID plan. Comments will be accepted until Tuesday, May 8. The World Privacy Forum has joined with a large coalition of groups to solicit public comments on REAL ID; to file comments, please visit the Speak Out Against REAL ID coalition page for more information. http://www.privacycoalition.org/stoprealid/

Update: World Privacy Forum's National Health Information Network Timeline

National Health Information Network -- Recently, the first live prototypes of the NHIN were demonstrated in Washington, D.C. This was a milestone event in the development of the planned network. The National Health Information Network is an ambitious project the U.S. government undertook in 2004 to digitize and network patient health records across the nation. This project raises challenging confidentiality, privacy, and security issues.

AOL Releases The Unfiltered Search Histories Of 657,000-Plus Users; World Privacy Forum Filing FTC Complaint

AOL released three months’ worth of the detailed search queries of 657,000-plus of its users. The approximately 20 million search queries and the additional data on users’ click-throughs to web sites in the search results are generally highly revealing of individuals’ personal, financial, political, medical, religious, and other preferences as well as the businesses and people they associate with.

Press Release: Call Don't Click Update: STILL BE SMART ABOUT ORDERING FEDERALLY MANDATED FREE CREDIT REPORTS - New Report Identifies Over 100 Imposter Domains Interfering with Federally Mandated Free Credit Report Site, www.AnnualCreditReport.com

In its first report on this subject published in February 2005, The World Privacy Forum documented that 96 known imposter domains existed, with 50 of those domains active and online. In its new study, “Call Don’t Click Update: Still be smart about ordering Federally mandated free credit reports,” the World Privacy Forum has found that 233 known imposter sites now exist, with 112 of the imposter domains active and online. This marks a 124 percent increase in known, active imposter domains since February.