Center for Democracy & Technology | Keeping the Internet Open, Innovative and Free

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Welcome to Take Back Your Privacy, the Center for Democracy & Technology’s campaign to put control over our personal data back where it belongs: in our own hands.

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Email Your Rep

The first step to Take Back Your Privacy is to let your representatives know that you want it! Are you frustrated that it's becoming difficult to track when, where, how, and to whom your personal information is disclosed? If so, contact your representative here.

Privacy Tools

Use CDT’s brand new Privacy Complaint Tool to share your complaints about companies that are violating your privacy. Send your complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or just share it with your friends.

Privacy Postings

Do You Know “I Can Stalk U”?

Date: 09/02/2010 - 2:51pm

More Issues in Consumer Privacy

The following is a guest post provided by Ben Jackson and Larry Pesce. They are the creators of I Can Stalk U, a website that uses information from geo-tagged photos that have been uploaded to the Internet to expose people's locations. Their goal is to raise awareness about the potential risks of instantly publishing photos that contain location-aware information. The opinions here are theirs only and do not necessarily represent those of CDT. The combined use of social media, smart phones and location-aware services has recently skyrocketed. A byproduct of this high-tech trio is that people are increasingly posting photos online, because after all, a picture is worth a thousand words - not just 140 characters. However, every digital photo contains data about how it was taken, when it was taken, and sometimes where it was taken. This can be very handy, but when the instant publication of these photos to the Internet is thrown into the mix, it can quickly go from “...

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What's the Diff? CDT Comparison Chart on Current Privacy Bills

by: Justin Brookman

Date: 08/05/2010 - 10:08am

More Issues in Consumer Privacy

Two weeks ago, CDT President Leslie Harris testified before the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection on the two privacy bills currently being debated in Washington: the BEST PRACTICES bill from Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush and a draft bill from Congressmen Rick Boucher and Cliff Stearns. During her testimony, Harris promised that CDT would publish a comparison chart on the two bills. Today, CDT is releasing that chart, which analyzes both bills in detail and provides recommendations for reconciling them. Both bills are pretty detailed, and we hope this chart makes clear how each would implement the Fair Information Practice principles as a baseline standard. In general, CDT supports how the BEST PRACTICES bill has built on the initial Boucher-Stearns draft to lay out a flexible, but comprehensive privacy framework. We recommend some revisions, but overall we are enthusiastic about the BEST PRACTICES bill, and we look forward...

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Closing Pandora’s Box

by: Justin Brookman

Date: 08/04/2010 - 10:14am

More Issues in Consumer Privacy

Last night, Pandora announced on their blog that they are taking all their users through a new interface to choose privacy settings for sharing information on its popular music listening site. We think this is a big deal for consumers, and we’re glad to see Pandora taking affirmative steps to put users in control of their privacy. A bit of background here: Pandora attracted a lot of attention a couple months ago when they started partnering with Facebook’s new “Instant Personalization” program. Although Pandora users already had “public profiles,” few knew or took advantage of them — most just went to the site to listen to music anonymously. That all changed when Pandora started using Facebook data to identify its members by real names and to publish to a user’s Facebook friends what music he or she was listening to. Many privacy advocates at the time criticized this data sharing and the confusing opt-out...

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Congress Surveys Consumer Privacy Landscape

by: Erica Newland

Date: 07/23/2010 - 5:06pm

Baseline Privacy Legislation

Privacy is a building block of trust in this digital age; and yes, there's an "app" for that. It's called a federal baseline consumer privacy bill, it just hasn't passed… yet. CDT President Leslie Harris testified yesterday at a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection examining two current privacy bills; the Best Practices Act (H.R. 5777) from Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Rush and a draft bill from from Congressmen Rick Boucher. In her written testimony Harris said:

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Take Back Your Privacy

Take Back Your Privacy is about you and your rights. For Congress and industry to understand that Internet user privacy matters, we as consumers need to send a clear message – we want our privacy.

When you join the privacy campaign, we’ll keep you informed about the major developments in Internet user privacy – whether they occur in Capitol Hill meeting rooms or Silicon Valley boardrooms. We’ll also tip you off to opportunities to make your voice heard, both by lawmakers and by the companies that collect our personal information.

We won’t share your information with anyone (our full privacy policy is here) and won’t overload you with e-mail.

Privacy Guides

Facebook Privacy Guide

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Tweet the Privacy Facts

3rd-party apps on your phone/social networking profile may be tracking you online or accessing your friends’ profiles #tbyp

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90% of young adults reject advertisements that are tailored based on information gathered about their offline behavior. #tbyp

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The United States lacks a comprehensive federal law protecting consumer privacy. #tbyp

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