Large majorities of consumers believe that the term "privacy policy" conveys a baseline level of information practices that protect their privacy. In short, "privacy," like "free" before it, has taken on normative meaning in the marketplace. When consumers see the term "privacy policy," they...

Why has identity theft remained so prevalent, in light of the development of ever more sophisticated fraud detection tools? Identity theft remains at 2003 levels – 9.9 million Americans fell victim to the crime in 2009.One faction explains the identity theft as a problem of a lack of control...

Identity theft is a growing problem. In any given identity theft situation, there are three actors - the victim, the impostor, and an institution, such as a bank or credit card company. Thus far, policymakers have attempted to address the crime by focusing on victims and impostors; victims are...

Imagine a future in which every purchase decision is as complex as choosing a mobile phone. What will ongoing service cost? Is it compatible with other devices you use? Can you move data and applications across devices? Can you switch providers? These are just some of the questions one must...

Europeans face a regulatory challenge: how can the human rights and dignitary values that animate data protection law be protected in transborder data flows? With the proposal of the EU-US Privacy Shield, part of the challenge will be answered by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is...

The ubiquity of mobile phones has long promised to spell the success of mobile payment platforms — a world in which the phone is a universal currency and no one needs plastic. While such predictions have proven mostly fruitless in the past, there is increasing evidence that the next few years...

This is a collection of the reports on the Annenberg national surveys that explored Americans' knowledge and opinions about the new digital-marketing world that was becoming part of their lives. So far we've released seven reports on the subject, in 1999, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2010, and 2012....

This short essay, prepared for the Future of Privacy Forum's Big Data and Privacy: Making Ends Meet event in September 2013, makes two observations concerning "big data." First, big data is not new. Consumer reporting, a field where information about individuals is aggregated and used to assess...

At the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), all privacy and security matters are assigned to a consumer protection economist from the agency's Bureau of Economics (BE). The BE is an important yet often ignored element of the FTC. Advocates and others operating before the Commission have been...