Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) has persistently challenged the health care industry’s improper use and disclosure of confidential medical information, which in many instances is used to market new or additional medication to patients. PRC has become aware that Caremark, a CVS owned company and one of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), is improperly sharing prescription information with CVS to steer pharmacy patients to CVS pharmacies.

Is your bank starting to charge you monthly fees for your formerly free checking account? Has a large, impersonal bank taken over the smaller bank that you were used to? Do you visit your local branch for service, and receive a sales pitch for products that you do not want? For these and other reasons, many consumers have become dissatisfied with their banking arrangements. If you are unhappy with your current bank, this alert will help you navigate the issues involved in switching your checking account to a new financial institution.

Snap a photo of a sunset with your iPhone and you can upload it to Twitter with a few clicks. But your smartphone might be transmitting more than a pretty photograph.  It could be collecting and storing data about your real-time location – and then broadcasting that information when you upload photos onto the Internet.

What is Geotagging?

Special Issue on "Issues and Challenges of the Diffusion of Web 2.0 and User Privacy and Security”

 Journal of Information Privacy and Security
http://jips.cob.tamucc.edu/

interview with Rainey Reitman
Director of Communications
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse 

How has societal perspective on privacy transformed with the evolution of web 2.0?

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse receives numerous inquiries about online information brokers. We’ve compiled this page to address some of the questions we get most frequently.  While we hope this page addresses all of your questions, we keep a list of grievances against specific companies. If you would like us to add your complaint to our database, please submit your complaint by visiting https://www.privacyrights.org/new-complaint.

Is the gift card that you received for your birthday last month burning a hole in your pocket? Do you still have an unused gift card from the holidays? Consumers often have had to worry about using gift cards before they lost their value. That will now begin to change for the better.

COMMENTS TO U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Submitted by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

September 13, 2010

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Office for Civil Rights
Attention: Privacy and Security Rule Modification
Hubert H. Humphrey Building, Room 509F
200 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20201

Submitted via: www.regulations.gov

Has your computer or smart phone become a resource to commit malicious acts against other persons and companies?  By taking advantage of a wide variety of computer vulnerabilities, your device may become a zombie that is under the control of a criminal that conducts crime using electronic devices (e-criminal).  Once an e-criminal has control, not only is your device being used to attack other systems, anything stored on, or typed into, that device is also compromised.

How Bots Work

The most recent total from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s Chronology of Data Breaches shows more than a half billion sensitive records breached since 2005, leaving Americans vulnerable to identity theft.

Employees losing laptop computers, hackers downloading credit card numbers and sensitive personal data accidentally exposed online -- the Chronology of Data Breaches shows hundreds of ways that the personal information of consumers is lost, stolen or exposed.

Every time you post a comment on the Internet, create an online profile or upload of photo of yourself, you may be sending a time capsule to a future employer.