Digital Privacy

Television maker VIZIO is paying $2.2 million in penalties to settle charges after the FTC and the New Jersey Attorney General’s office brought a complaint against the company for violating its customers’ privacy. The complaint against VIZIO stated that the company collected detailed information on millions of its customers TV viewing habits without their express consent, and that VIZIO facilitated something called “data appending,” which is when even more detailed information is added to existing customer profiles.

The Global Risk Report 2017 from the World Economic Forum cites threats to global economic wellbeing ranging from natural disasters and large scale involuntary migration to — this year — risks arising from a “growing cyberdependency.” Specific risks the report calls out in this category are cyberattacks, data fraud and theft, critical infrastructure breakdown, and  “adverse

The closely watched Safe Harbor talks to craft new privacy rules for transatlantic data flows between the US and the EU have resulted in some preliminary signals today, although a final outcome is still pending. Commissioner Jourova, speaking before the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs, said that the talks had not yet produced an agreement.

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.

From advanced biosensors to healthy cities in China to robots and telemedicine, this is WPF’s video capture of the key trends and technologies at the 2015 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. This video was premiered at Georgia Tech/Academy of Medicine on Data Privacy Day, 2015.