Digital Privacy

♦  Digital Privacy  

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• Joseph Turow, Americans and Online Privacy: The System is Broken, The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania (2003).  (Key findings: (1) 57% of U.S. adults who use the internet at home believe incorrectly that when a website has a privacy policy, it will not share their personal information with other websites or companies;  (2) 47% of U.S. adults who use the internet at home say website privacy policies are easy to understand. However, 66% of those who are confident about their understanding of privacy policies also believe (incorrectly) that sites with a privacy policy won’t share data; (3) 59% of adults who use the internet at home know that websites collect information about them even if they don’t register. They do not, however, understand that data flows behind their screens invisibly connect seemingly unrelated bits about them. When presented with a common version of the way sites track, extract, and share information to make money from advertising, 85% of adults who go online at home did not agree to accept it on even a valued site. When offered a choice to get content from a valued site with such a policy or pay for the site and not have it collect information, 54% of adults who go online at home said that they would rather leave the web for that content than do either; (4) Among the 85% who did not accept the policy, one in two (52%) had earlier said they gave or would likely give the valued site their real name and email address—the very information a site needs to begin creating a personally identifiable dataset about them; (5) Despite strong concerns about online information privacy, 64% of these online adults say they have never searched for information about how to protect their information on the web; 40% say that they know “almost nothing” about stopping sites from collecting information about them, and 26% say they know just “a little.” Only 9% of American adults who use the internet at home say they know a lot; (6) Overwhelmingly, however, they support policies that make learning what online companies know about them straightforward. 86% believe that laws that forces website policies to have a standard format will be effective in helping them protect their information; (7) Yet most Americans feel unsure or conflicted about whether key institutions will help them with their information privacy or take it away. Only 13% of American adults who use the web at home trust that the government will help them protect personal information online while not disclosing personal information about them without permission; (8) Similarly, only 18% trust their banks and credit card companies and only 18% trust their internet service providers (ISPs) to act that way;  (9) Parents whose children go online are generally no different on these attitudes, knowledge or actions than the rest of U.S. adults who use the internet at home. ) 
•  In re Northwest Airlines Privacy Litigation, 2004 WL 1278459 (D. Minn. 2004) (holding airline customers breach of contract claim must fail since they did not allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach of the privacy policy). 
•  In re GeoCities, 1999 FTC LEXIS 17 (Feb. 5, 1999). In 1999, the FTC and GeoCities reached a settlement after the FTC prosecuted GeoCities for using information collected on their website that was “optional” in manners inconsistent with their published privacy policy.
• Jeff Sovern, Opting In, Opting Out, or No Options at All: The Fight for Control of Personal Information, 74 Wash. L. Rev. 1033, 1083 (1999).