Consumer Privacy

Areas of Focus Within Consumer Privacy

Get more detail on issues related to Consumer Privacy

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  Communications Privacy

  Individuals reasonably expect that content and details of their electronic communications will remain private. Abusive commercial data practices and government surveillance threaten that privacy.

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  Competition and Privacy

  Privacy protection and platform competition are closely linked. A lack of both has enabled a small number of firms to consolidate and exploit huge volumes of personal data.

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  Data Brokers

  Regulation is desperately needed to protect individuals from companies that aggregate and sell personal information at industrial scale.

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  Data Minimization

  Data minimization offers a practical solution to a broken internet ecosystem by providing clear limits on how companies can collect and use data.

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  Online Advertising & Tracking

  Massive troves of personal data are collected and transferred within the targeted advertising ecosystem. This ubiquitous tracking of everything we do online, and the entities that aggregate and monetize it, poses threats to consumers’ privacy, autonomy, and security.

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  Robocalls

  Robocalls are more than a minor inconvenience; they are a serious privacy invasion. EPIC regularly defends the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the federal anti-robocall statute.

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  Social Media Privacy

  Many social media platforms are built on excessive collection, algorithmic processing, and commercial exploitation of users’ personal data. That must change.