Consumer, Child Health, and Privacy Groups Urge Federal Trade Commission to Investigate and Bring Action Against Topps for Violating Children’s Privacy Rights through its Child-directed Website Candymania.com and its #RockThatRock Contest

Through the terrfic work of Public Citizen, CDD submitted this Amicus brief today in what's called the Wyndham case.   Wyndham and its allies are challenging the much needed role of the FTC to protect Americans from data breaches and related online harms.  That they are afraid of having a consumer protection agency do its job says a great deal about them.  The brief is attached.

U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) respectfully submit these additional comments to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). A set of regulatory and other safeguards is urgently required to ensure that contemporary “Big Data”-driven financial services are used in an equitable, transparent, and responsible manner. All Americans, especially those who confront daily challenges to their economic security, should be assured that their lives will be enhanced—not undermined—by the new digital-data financial services marketplace.

Washington, DC: The key framework that is supposed to protect EU citizens’ privacy when their data is collected by U.S. companies—known as the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor—is failing to provide them the safeguards that were promised, according to a complaint filed today by a leading U.S. consumer privacy group—the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). The complaint, filed at the U.S.

As part of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the federal law protecting the digital privacy of kids 12 and under (and which empowers parents or other key caregivers to control the data collected from children), a so-called "Safe Harbor" system was created.  The theory being that companies joining a FTC approved Safe Harbor regime, which is commited to ensuring meaningful compliance with COPPA, is an effective way to have companies follow the law.  Yesterday was the deadline for Safe Harbor reports to be submitted to the FTC, and the first once since the new stronger safe

Statement from Hudson Kingston, CDD Legal Director:

The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection sent a letter to Facebook and Whatsapp [attached] requiring the companies to honor the latter's privacy promises (no advertising, highly limited data collection etc).  Facebook is in the process of acquiring Whatsapp.  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and CDD

Groups File Report with the White House “Big Data” Review Proceeding

EPIC and CDD filed this at the FTC today.  Despite the protestations of Whatsapp's founders, they cannot guarantee that Facebook won't eventually incorporate the rich vein of mobile, location and other data that flows from its services.  If the Whatsapp founders are truly to commited to its user privacy, we ask them to enter into a voluntary 20 year consent decree with the FTC, placing on the record that they will maintain privacy practices without Facebook interference.