Privacy advocates: Consumer education isn't enough

The efforts of e-commerce sites and online advertisers to educate U.S. consumers about privacy and targeted advertising aren't enough because many consumers won't take the time to understand the issues, privacy advocates said Thursday. Leaders of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) called for Congress to pass online privacy regulations during a forum hosted by the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. And Susan Grant, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, suggested the U.S. government should set up a "do not track" list, prohibiting advertisers from tracking online activities, modeled after the do-not-call list governing telemarketers. Many U.S. consumers don't understand online advertising practices because the ways in which online companies use personal data is constantly changing, said Marc Rotenberg, EPIC's executive director. He pointed to a 2005 University of Pennsylvania survey in which only 25 percent of respondents knew that a Web site having a privacy policy doesn't guarantee that the site refrains from sharing customers' information with companies.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/17/Privacy-advocates-Consumer-edu...