OECD | Fair Information Practices — At a key meeting of the OECD on the future of the Internet economy, the OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria reaffirmed support of the 1980 OECD Privacy Principles. Also, Secretary General Angel Gurria expressed support for formalizing the participation of civil society in OECD going forward and for paying more attention to information security and identity theft problems. Secretary General Gurria noted that “A more decentralised, networked approach to policy formulation for the Internet Economy that includes the active participation of stakeholders needs to be the norm.” Many parts of the recent OECD meeting may be viewed online.

Genetic privacy — The World Privacy Forum participated in a Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG) conference on genetic databases at New York University. The groundbreaking conference focused on key issues of race and genetic databases, fairness, accuracy, and privacy. The World Privacy Forum discussed a paper by Dr. Harry G. Levine, Drug Arrests and DNA, noting that innocent victims of medical identity theft may be arrested for the “drug seeking behavior” of the criminals impersonating them.

Financial privacy — The World Privacy Forum filed comments with the Federal Trade Commission today about its proposed study of credit -based pricing practices for homeowners insurance. The World Privacy Forum requested that the FTC ask insurers if there are specific procedures in place for detecting, mitigating, and responding to consumers who have been victims of identity theft. The WPF noted its support for the FTC’s use of the FTC Act Section 6(b) authority to acquire robust information from the insurance companies.

Job scams are as old as jobs themselves. In past years, con artists would put a bad job ad up, fool a job seeker into giving up their money, and then physically move on to a new city. Now bad job ads have moved onto the Internet, with devastating consequences. The very things that make the Internet so effective for job seekers — speed, convenience, and a nationwide job search from a computer screen — are the same things that make it effective for fraudulent activity. Job seekers and job sites have unfortunately been targeted with sophisticated triangulation scams that move rapidly and seamlessly through a selection of job sites from coast to coast in a matter of days.

Job scams are as old as jobs themselves. In past years, con artists would put a bad job ad up, fool a job seeker into giving up their money, and then physically move on to a new city. Now bad job ads have moved onto the Internet, with devastating consequences. The very things that make the Internet so effective for job seekers — speed, convenience, and a nationwide job search from a computer screen — are the same things that make it effective for fraudulent activity. Job seekers and job sites have unfortunately been targeted with sophisticated triangulation scams that move rapidly and seamlessly through a selection of job sites from coast to coast in a matter of days.