Getting Back Control - The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights

 

With today's social media trend spreading like wildfire we get so caught up trying to stay "in the know", posting our latest tweet and letting everyone know your having a bad day on Facebook,  that we forget all of our information is flying around out there on a "cloud" for anyone to see.  The web is a nightmare for those who want to remain private. With every search or click-clack of the keyboard you open yourself up for an array of spam, computer viruses, and yes the government. This year the Obama administration has decided to build a few safety nets for the consumers out there.

In Edward Wyatt's article, White House, Consumers in Mind, Offers Online Privacy Guidelines,  
President Obama was quoted as saying, “American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal information is safe online.”  A new set of rules have been proposed called the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. These rights will give us as the consumer more control over our privacy and force larger companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple, Amazon, Microsoft as well as others to become more open and transparent about what their actual privacy and security policies are. By making the policies easier to understand and more available to the consumer the government can then hold the companies responsible for sharing unauthorized information about it's consumers. Obama's administration has urged Congress in support of the legislation and wants to give the FTC and State Attorneys Generals additional powers to reinforce the bill. So far Google has taken the lead and their new policies will be in effect as of March 1, 2012. 
As of now the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights is voluntary and even if everyone complied this would not stop advertisers from gathering data from your Web browser history. I tell my kids and everyone else that asks, "if you search it, tag it, say it, or type it, your associated with it forever"  big brother truly is watching and now it's just a matter of what he does with what he sees.