BBB National Programs Blog

Imagine that you have been placed in charge of setting up a contact tracing system using the smartphones already in the hands of the public. As we explained in our first piece in this series, one of the main goals of this system is to alert those who may have come into contact with others infected with coronavirus.

SARS-CoV-2, commonly known as coronavirus, hit the world by storm, altering the lives of people from the American midwest to Shanghai. As the world unites to “flatten the curve” and guard the surge capacities of hospitals, a common term that has emerged is “contact tracing.” Contact tracing is broadly defined as monitoring individuals that have had contact with a person infected by a disease to ensure that they get treatment and prevent further transmission.

On May 28, the 2020 CARU Conference officially kicked off with a keynote from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Andrew Smith, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. Andrew joined moderator Alice Cahn, Founder of Cahnworks and a legacy name in children’s media, for a virtual fireside chat about the changing landscape of child-directed content over the last few years.

The FTC has just announced that they have reached a settlement with children’s app developer, HyperBeard, for unlawfully collecting data from children, users under 13, and using it to target them for behavioral advertising, otherwise known as interest-based advertising.

Children’s privacy is a hot topic in the media these days. It may seem like a new concern but we at the BBB National Programs’ Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU) have been keeping an eye on it since the beginning. CARU was established decades ago to promote responsible advertising to children at a time when advertising was mainly on television. The self-regulatory program and its guidelines were designed to adapt to changes in the marketing and media landscape – offline and online - so when concerns about online data collection practices arose, CARU was able to get a jump on it even before lawmakers could pass the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in 1998.

Amidst school closures and other education uncertainties, education technology, or “ed tech” is at the forefront of conversation. We rely on their online tools to facilitate learning in a virtual environment.

Re-certification is the process by which you annually re-affirm to DOC your Privacy Shield self-certification. Your annual Privacy Shield re-certification is essentially a process of re-approval, much the same as the initial process of becoming approved under Privacy Shield.

Most Americans are unsure about how their personal data is collected, used, and shared (collectively, processed) by companies, and desire government-mandated protections to ensure they are not harmed by this activity. In the absence of federal consumer privacy legislation, the California State Legislature has stepped in to protect its residents’ privacy.

On October 10, 2019 the California Attorney General released the long-awaited draft regulations under the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). CCPA goes into effect on January 1, 2020. The draft regulations interpret and clarify the CCPA. Among these clarifications are detailed descriptions of the requirements of the privacy notices that should be provided to California consumers.

If someone orders a pair of shoes online, the business must receive and process the person’s physical address in order to complete the delivery. Thus, for the purpose of order fulfillment, the collection and processing of the person’s physical address is necessary. Perhaps in a soft sense of “consent,” such a transaction involves the consent of the consumer.