Email users are being bombarded with authentic-looking messages that instruct them to provide sensitive personal information. It's called "phishing." Individuals who "bite" are exposed to identity theft.

Phishing occurs when a consumer receives a deceptively-legitimate looking email from what appears to be a reputable company. The email asks recipients to update their credit card information or their account will be promptly terminated. Or the message offers a service to protect their credit cards from possible fraud.

Contact:
Beth Givens, PRC Director
619-298-3396
bethg(at)privacyrights.org

Beginning on July 1, state government agencies as well as companies and nonprofit organizations regardless of geographic location must notify California customers if personal information maintained in computerized data files have been compromised by unauthorized access.

Information Flows: The Costs and Benefits to Consumers and Businesses of the Collection and Use of Consumer Information2

FTC File No. P034102

June 18, 2003

Note: These written comments are a longer version of the presentation given by Beth Givens at the FTC's "Information Flows" workshop on June 18, 2003.

Mark Hochhauser
Readability Consultant

By Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

and Consumers Union, West Coast Regional Office
www.privacyrights.org
www.consumersunion.org
 

The laws cited below can be found in their entirety at:
www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html
 

Californians Can Register Starting April 1

National "Do Not Call" Registry Launched June 27

By Pam Dixon *
Principal Investigator
Online Job Search Privacy Study
www.pamdixon.com

Timothy J. Muris, Chair
Federal Trade Commission
600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20580

Dear Chairman Muris:

Submitting a resume on the Internet could result in a privacy nightmare for would-be job seekers. Online resume databases could be using and selling personal information in ways never imagined by applicants, according to Pam Dixon and the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC).

Fed-up with unwanted telemarketing calls, consumers are anxious to add their telephone number to a do-not-call list. Interest has been fueled by recent media reports of a new do-not-call list soon to launched in California. When this happens, California will join about 20 other states that already have do-not-call lists.

In addition, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has adopted rules that will establish a national do-not-call registry, and the FTC may be joined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in this effort.