Category Archives: Privacy

FTC Calls for Research Presentations for PrivacyCon 2022

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a call for research presentations on a wide range of privacy and data security topics such as commercial surveillance and automated decision making for its annual PrivacyCon event, which will take place virtually on November 1, 2022. PrivacyCon 2022 will bring together a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss […]

Lauren Henry Scholz article argues for private claims to enforce privacy rights

Lauren Henry Scholz of Florida State has written Private Rights of Action in Privacy Law, William & Mary Law Review, Forthcoming. Here's the abstract: Many privacy advocates assume that the key to providing individuals with more privacy protection is strengthening the power government has to directly sanction actors that hurt the privacy interests of citizens. This […]

Study finds consumer medical data breaches can cause consumers to switch providers and increase gym visits

Junyuan Ke and Weiguang Wang, both of the University of Rochester – Simon Business School and Natasha Zhang Foutz, Associate Professor of Commerce at the University of Virginia, have written Heterogeneous Consumer Response and Mitigation toward Healthcare Data Breach: Insights from Location Big Data. Here is the abstract: Data breaches pose grave dangers to consumers, […]

Anita Allen Article on Race and Online Privacy

Anita L. Allen of Penn has written Dismantling the Black Opticon: Race Equity and Online Privacy and Data Protection Reform, forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal. Here’s the abstract: In the opening decades of the 21st century popular online platforms rapidly transformed the world. These platforms have come with benefits, but a heavy price to […]

Tschider article on consent and privacy

Charlotte Tschider of Loyola of Chicago has written Meaningful Choice: A History of Consent and Alternatives to the Consent Myth, 22 N.C. J.L. & Tech. 617 (2021). Here is the abstract: Although the first legal conceptions of commercial privacy were identified in Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis’s foundational 1890 article, The Right to Privacy, conceptually, […]

Colorado becomes third state to enact major consumer privacy law; will Congress react?

by Jeff Sovern Bloomberg Law has the story here (possibly behind pay wall). The first was California, and the second was Virginia. Others are likely to follow. The more states that enact privacy laws, the more businesses are likely to complain that they are encountering compliance difficulties and expense complying with the different laws. They […]

Breaking: SCOTUS rules that “a necessary feature” of an ATDS “is the capacity to use a random or sequential number generator to either store or produce phone numbers to be called”

Here, in Facebook v. Duguid. In other words, if all the device does is call numbers that you specificaly tell it to call, it's not an ATDS within the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

What implications does the coronavirus have for consumers and consumer protection ?

by Jeff Sovern The coronavirus is already having an impact on consumers and consumer protection. Some initial observations: The FTC and FDA have sent warning letters to companies reportedly making deceptive or unsupported claims about their products' ability to treat the coronanvirus. It's good that they're on the job. There have been reports of discrimination against Asians […]