Privacy: From principles to practice

Privacy Awareness Week, an event organized by the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities, is May 14-18, 2018. This year’s theme, “From Principles to Practice,” echoes the Federal Trade Commission’s mission to help consumers and businesses stay on top of privacy and online security. Here’s a sampling of how we make that happen.

The FTC’s Consumer Center offers resources to help people understand and maintain privacy protection. Over the past year, we shared tips for using peer-to-peer payment systems and cryptocurrencies. We warned about phishers sending fake invoices, and imposters posing as representatives from the State Department, FEMA, the Social Security Administration, and the Chinese Consulate. And we gave people the facts, and actions to take, about data breaches at Equifax, at retail stores, and with commonly used apps.

The FTC helps businesses understand their legal responsibilities with materials from our Business Center. We shared cautionary tales about Uber, Venmo, and VTech, which settled enforcement actions with the FTC. We debuted our popular Stick With Security series, which offers insights on specific data security principles. And, to cap it off, we celebrated a milestone 1,000 business blog posts since 2010, with topics covering consumer privacy, data security, and privacy and security.

The FTC hosts informative conferences like its annual PrivacyCon, which highlights the latest consumer privacy and data security research, the Connected Cars Workshop, which identified how cars collect and use data, and this year’s joint Student Privacy and Ed Tech workshop with the U.S. Department of Education, which taught attendees about laws and technologies used in education.

The FTC is proud to work with members of the Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities Forum during Privacy Awareness Week to highlight the importance of privacy protection.

The Asia Pacific Privacy Authorities (APPA) Forum was established in 1992. It’s a forum for privacy, security and data protection regulators to collaborate and exchange ideas. For more information about APPA and Privacy Awareness Week, visit www.privacyawarenessweek.org.