FTC Consumer Protection Head Warns Ad Companies About Privacy

The ad industry shouldn’t “play games” with privacy by crafting policies that use language in ways that defy consumer expectations, Federal Trade Commission consumer protection head Jessica Rich said this week at an industry event. “If they purport to limit tracking based on sensitive data,” Rich said, referring to industry privacy codes, “they shouldn’t play games about what ‘sensitive data’ means, such as defining medical data to mean only official medical records.”