FTC Workshop Provides Insight On Best Practices To Mitigate Informational Injuries

On December 12, 2017, the FTC hosted a workshop to discuss informational injuries that consumers may suffer when their personal information is misused. Discussion topics included the types of informational injuries consumers suffer and business and consumer perspectives about costs, benefits and risks of collecting information.

Some categories of injuries include: deception injuries or subversion of consumer choice when companies don't abide by privacy and data protection policies that they may advertise; financial injuries, such as credit card fraud; health or safety injuries, such as stalking or break-ins that could occur due to a leak in home addresses; unwarranted intrusion injuries, which could occur through the piecing together of various data sets to confirm private information about consumers; and reputational injuries, which could occur if personal health information is leaked about a consumer. The challenge regarding informational injuries is that it is