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Financial privacy / credit reports — The NCLC, Consumer’s Union, and the World Privacy Forum filed extensive joint comments today regarding the proposed rulemaking, Procedures to Enhance the Accuracy and Integrity of Information Furnished to Consumer Reporting Agencies under Section 312 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. The results of the proposed rulemaking will have a significant impact on how the accuracy of credit reports is defined for consumers, and will have a substantive influence over how consumers may handle credit report disputes directly with those who furnish information for the reports.

Financial privacy | credit reports — Consumers and organizations have an opportunity to submit public comments about the accuracy and integrity of credit reports. Until February 11, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission and other banking agencies will be accepting comments on their draft rulemaking regarding how creditors and other furnishers provide information to consumer reporting agencies, and which types of direct disputes they must handle. This proposed rulemaking is a key one; it defines what accuracy and integrity of information provided to consumer reporting agencies means, how disputes may be handled directly with the furnishers, and which types of direct disputes furnishers may ignore. The NCLC, Consumer’s Union, and the World Privacy Forum have written a sample letter that may be downloaded and used or modified for the comments. To file your letter, submit your comments to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System by mailing the comments to regs.comments@federalreserve.gov with the subject line “Docket No. R–1300.”

Opt-out | Financial privacy — The World Privacy Forum has updated its popular Top Ten Opt Out list to reflect several new change made to the Direct Marketing Association opt outs. In the past, some of the DMA opt-outs, like the Direct Marketing Association’s mailing preference lists, used to cost $1. That fee has now been removed for people opting out online. Please see item #3 on the Opt Out list for the complete update.

Genetic privacy | SACGHS — The World Privacy Forum filed extensive comments with the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society (SACGHS) regarding its draft report on genetic testing oversight, U.S. System of Oversight of Genetic Testing: A Response to the Charge of the Secretary of HHS. The World Privacy Forum requested SACGHS pay more attention in its final report to the privacy consequences of unregulated genetic testing that occurs outside the health care sector. The WPF comments note that current and proposed remedies for the misuse of genetic information tend to focus on the use of the information within the health care treatment, payment, and insurance systems. What is crucially important is to analyze how to protect genetic information in the realm of commercial collection, maintenance, use and disclosures. Another area the comments discuss is the potential for new forms of fraudulent activity related to genetic testing (Phantom genetic testing, that is, genetic tests marketed to consumers that are not even real or viable genetic tests.) The World Privacy Forum specifically recommended that the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics be tasked with looking at this matter, that an independent pre-market assessment mechanism is created for genetic tests offered outside the clinical setting, and that privacy be expressly discussed in the overarching recommendations in the final report.

Fair Information Practices — The World Privacy Forum has updated its page on Fair Information Practices to include the new work by Robert Gellman in this area. His article, Fair Information Practices: A Basic History, December 2007, is an important history of the development of Fair Information Practices. It includes information that even experts familiar with FIPs may not know.