IN THE NEWS:

Privacy


If you want to keep your fondness for eating Frosted Flakes or reading the National Enquirer your dirty little secret, don't use a credit card at the grocery store or the newsstand! Grocery stores, insurance companies, banks, mail-order firms, and credit bureaus all have a surprisingly detailed personal profile of each of their customers. And they don't necessarily keep that information to themselves!

H. Jeff Smith, author of Managing Privacy: Information Technology & Corporate America says that companies only implement policies about releasing such information when lawsuits are threatened. Smith has been quoted in the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Privacy Times on privacy issues. In his book he offers policy suggestions such as the creation of a Data Protection Board and a set of "generally accepted privacy principles."