At the World Privacy Forum, consumers frequently approach us and ask us where they can complain about privacy and security issues. It is not unusual for us to hear about issues like online scams and phishing schemes that cross country borders. The Econsumer.gov website is designed to help consumers with ...
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 ...
The World Privacy Forum filed comments to the US Department of Education regarding its student health privacy guidance published August 18, 2015. The World Privacy Forum supports the DoE guidance, which clarifies how universities and colleges are to handle sensitive student medical records in cases of non-medical litigation. The guidance ...
WPF has a busy fall line-up of publications and presentations. Here are some highlights of upcoming events where WPF is presenting: 15 September , Washington DC : WPF is a panelist at the Biometrics Institute forum discussion on facial recognition. More here . 26 October , Amsterdam, The Netherlands : ...
I spoke on a panel recently on the topic of all things privacy and biometrics . The Biometrics Institute hosted the discussion at the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. The panel discussion was subject to Chatham House rules, and, in order to foster open dialogue, the audience did not include ...
Most parents are unaware that schools can compromise their children’s privacy and possibly their safety by sharing private information like their child’s phone number, home address, date of birth, email, and photos with anyone without consent. The good news is that parents already have the right to opt out of ...
Most parents and students do not know that under the law as it is now, Directory Information about students can be shared with third parties without parental or student consent. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act determines what kinds of information schools can share with third parties. Although directory information may sound innocuous, it can include information about each student that is quite detailed. Directory information can include:
Many people have told us that they think opting out is confusing. We agree. Opting out can range from the not-too-difficult (the FTC’s Do Not Call list is a fairly simple opt out) to the challenging (the National Advertising Initiative opt out can be tricky). Our hope is that this list will clarify which opt out does what, and how to go about opting out.
India's Supreme Court has issued an important ruling and interim orders about a much-watched case related to India's national biometric IDs and how they are used. More than 800 million biometric IDs have been issued to Indians, and are called the Aadhaar card or the UID, for Universal ID. The ...
Most parents are unaware that schools can compromise their children’s privacy and possibly their safety by sharing private information like their child’s phone number, home address, date of birth, email, and photos with anyone without consent. The good news is that parents already have the right to opt out of ...
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 ...
WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon will be presenting a two hour technology and privacy training at the National Network to End Domestic Violence Tech Summit. The training will be geared to professionals who work with survivors of domestic violence, stalking, and related issues. The workshop will cover the key emerging ...
This WPF video shows how current biosensors look and operate when they are in pill form. The pill sensors highlighted in this video are designed to be swallowed so they can then detect and report on a person’s body temperature to devices such as smart phones. This video is part of WPF's High Tech Health series.
The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about wellness programs and related privacy impacts to individuals. Many Americans now take part in employer wellness programs, and they are increasingly and justifiably concerned about the sensitive information these programs are gathering, sometimes in return for incentives such as discounts on pricing for health insurance. These comments to the EEOC address some of the most significant challenges individuals face, including voluntariness, fairness, due process, and information sharing outside of HIPAA.
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 -- Today, the United States Senate passed the USA FREEDOM Act in a vote of 67 - 32. As passed, the final bill will limit the "bulk collection" of Americans' phone data after the President has signed the bill into law. "This ...
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 ...
Each WPF report is hosted on a dedicated report landing page. Most reports are best viewed as a PDF download, links available on the landing pages.
The FCC has announced that it will be considering a declaratory order and ruling June 18, 2015 on more than 20 petitions about robocalls. The ruling would update and clarify the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The news is very good for consumers, because the FCC has stated clearly in its ...
The World Privacy Forum submitted comments today to the National Institute of Standards and Technology in response to its publication, Draft Report on De-Identification of Personally Identifiable Information (NISTIR 8053). The WPF welcomes the draft NIST report, as the area of de-identification and re-identification of personal data swirls with controversy ...
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 ...
Executive Director Pam Dixon will be speaking this Friday at the National Association of Healthcare Journalists about electronic records, and the risk of medical identity theft and other risks that arise from data breaches of medical records. Dixon's talk will cover new research, as well as discuss potential solutions to ...
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 ...
This coming Thursday, Pam Dixon will be presenting new research on collections scoring, privacy, and impacts on low and middle income consumers. The Dixon/Gellman report, The Scoring of America , sparked a national conversation about analytics and fairness in the realm of consumer scores. This talk focuses on one particular ...
The Healthy Cities Project in China is one where mobile devices, mobile health mini-hubs, and sensors are the key way that patients, doctors, government, and enterprises can input, monitor, and access vital health statistics and other information in the cloud. Twenty million people already use this system. Healthy Cities is important for study, because it is a fully established infrastructure in those cities in China where it has been deployed. In the US, the Healthy Cities project is being studied by academics to see how it could be replicated in the US marketplace.