Red Flags and Privacy: FTC Insights from Joel Winston

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Data and privacy protection - there's much that government, industry and consumers alike can do to improve information security. And the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is at the heart of education and enforcement efforts.

In an exclusive interview, the FTC's Joel Winston discusses:

Winston is Associate Director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. That Division has responsibility over consumer privacy and data security issues, identity theft and credit reporting matters, among other things. Mr. Winston serves on the federal government's Identity Theft Task Force, which was created by President Bush in March 2006. He also is a member of the Advisory Board for the BNA Privacy & Security Law Reporter, and served on the Editorial Board and as an author for a treatise published in 2009 by the American Bar Association, "Consumer Protection Law Developments." In 2008, Mr. Winston received the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive, one of the highest honors given to members of the federal government's Senior Executive Service.

TOM FIELD: Hello, I'm Tom Field, Editorial Director with Information Security Media Group. We are talking today with Joel Winston, Associate Director of the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection with the Federal Trade Commission. Joel, thanks so much for joining me today.

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JOEL WINSTON: Thank you.

FIELD: Just to give our audience a little bit of context here, tell us a bit about yourself and your role within the FTC's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection.

WINSTON: I have been with the FTC for 33 years in a variety of roles and for the last five years or so I have been head of this relatively new division at the FTC, which focuses on issues of privacy, data security, identity theft and credit reporting.

FIELD: So within that division Joel what would you say are your areas of greatest focus this year that are getting the most attention?

WINSTON: It would be best to go through it subject by subject. In terms of general privacy, what is going on out there is the development of a lot of new technologies that may offer consumers many benefits but raise certain privacy issues; and we have been focusing a lot on these new technologies and the privacy implications of those.

For example, one area where we are spending a lot of focus right now is online behavioral advertising. That is where your activities online, the Web sites you visit, the search terms you put into your search engines, etc. are being tracked, collected and compiled and then used to target advertising back to you, which for some people is a good thing. It results in ads that are more interesting to them. On the other hand, to some people it is frightening that this much information about their behavior is being collected. It is an example of a new kind of technology that has privacy implications as well.

In the area of data security, we are continuing to bring a lot of cases against companies that do not have adequate data security and are not using reasonable measure to secure data. We all read about the data breaches that are occurring seemingly every week at major institutions and we are trying in many ways to get the message across to the business community about the importance of securing sensitive consumer information.

In the area of identity theft this continues to be a major problem that affects millions of consumers every year. We have a very active program to help consumers avoid identity theft and, if they become victims, to recover from that and we have a number of activities ongoing there.

Finally, we are focusing on the area of credit reporting given current economic conditions, particularly consumers having trouble getting credit, getting employment, getting insurance; the accuracy of your credit report is all the more important than it has ever been. So we enforce the Fair Credit Reporting Act which is designed to both protect the privacy of consumers' credit information as well as to ensure that the information is as accurate as possible.

So we have an active law enforcement program where we are in the midst of bringing a number of cases against businesses, credit reporting agencies and others who did not comply with their obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We have a number of rulemakings ongoing that Congress has given to us and that is really where our focus is right now.