Category Archives: Privacy

Marotta-Wurgler Study on Explanations for Privacy Policy Content

Florencia Marotta-Wurgler of NYU has written Self-Regulation and Competition in Privacy Policies, 45 Journal of Legal Studies (2016). Here's the abstract I investigate alternative explanations for the content of privacy policies. Under one model of self-regulation, firms signal their privacy protections to consumers by highlighting compliance with third-party guidelines. However, in a sample of 249 […]

Times Report on How Auto Lenders Track Borrowers’ Locations

Here.  Excerpt: They can figure out when you leave town and see where you parked your car. They can see how many times you went to the grocery store or the health clinic. Auto loans to Americans with poor credit have been booming, and many finance companies, credit unions and auto dealers are using technologies […]

What the Vizio Case May Portend About FTC Privacy Enforcement

by Jeff Sovern The FTC, New Jersey AG's Office, and Vizio have agreed to a court order under which Vizio will pay 2.2 million to settle charges that Vizio recorded and sold information about the viewing practices of consumers watching Vizio TVs without obtaining consumers' consent and without their knowledge.  You can read Leslie Fair's […]

Trump Names as FCC Chair Ajit Pai, Critic of FCC TCPA Interpretations

Here. Pai, a Republican, has been critical of FCC interpretations of the TCPA (see here and here). Here's the perspective of ACA International, an industry organization : Of particular importance to the credit and collection industry, Pai has fiercely objected to the FCC’s more recent interpretations of the TCPA spearheaded by Wheeler.  Authoring a hard-hitting […]

Ben-Shahar & Strakilvitz on Contracting Over Privacy: A Symposium Introduction

Omri Ben-Shahar and Lior Strahilevitz, both of Chicago, have written an introduction to a symposium, Contracting Over Privacy: Introduction, 43 Journal of Legal Studies, No. S2, 2016. Here's the abstract: This short essay introduces papers presented at the symposium Contracting over Privacy, which took place at the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics at the University of […]

Cooper & Wright on Economics in FTC Privacy Policy

James C. Cooper and Joshua D. Wright, both of George Mason have written The Missing Role of Economics in FTC Privacy Policy, Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy, Jules Polonetsky, Evan Selinger & Omer Tene, eds., Cambridge University Press (2017), Forthcoming.  Here's the abstract: The FTC has been in the privacy game for almost twenty years. In […]

To Users of Our Casebook Who Assign the CAN-SPAM Materials: Facebook Case Reversed in Part

by Jeff Sovern The Ninth Circuit reversed the portion of the Facebook, Inc. v. Power Ventures, Inc., case at page 510 of our consumer law casebook, dealing with the CAN-SPAM Act, on the issue of whether the spam was materially misleading.  Other portions of the decision, not reprinted in the casebook, were affirmed in part.   The decision is reported […]

The Conversation: How companies learn what children secretly want

Here.  Op-ed by Faith Boninger, Research Associate in Education Policy, University of Colorado, and Alex Molnar, Research Professor, University of Colorado.  Excerpt: In the U.S. and around the world, millions of digital data points are collected daily from children by private companies that provide educational technologies to teachers and schools. Once data are collected, there is little […]

Two Books Co-authored by Tennessee’s Maurice Stucke

He writes that "Both books examine the intersection of competition, privacy and consumer protection law." One is Big Data and Competition Policy, written  with Allen Grunes.  Here's a description from Amazon's web site: Big Data and Big Analytics are a big deal today. Big Data is playing a pivotal role in many companies' strategic decision-making. […]