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Press Release Thursday, February 3, 2000 |
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Frank Torres, legislative counsel for
Consumers Union in Washington, D.C., made the following statement
today about the proposed privacy rules released by federal regulators
implementing the provisions of the financial services modernization
bill approved in 1999:
"The federal regulators have taken some steps toward protecting
consumers' privacy, but given that the financial services law is so
weak, consumers still do not have an adequate level of protection for
their private information.
"The rules have a broad definition of what kind of information and
institutions are covered by privacy requirements, which is
encouraging. It covers your health information and your transaction
and experience data, which are especially important to consumers.
"However, we do have some concerns about other issues addressed by
these rules. When an institution notifies you about the options you
have about it sharing your information, the notice should be easy to
read, easy to find, and easy to compare with other institutions.
When it tells you how your information will be used and who sees it,
the content should be specific and simple to understand.
"It's unfortunate that these rules are constrained by the
financial services law passed last year. The law provides consumers
no ability whatsoever to keep an institution from sharing their
personal data with its affiliates. It contains huge loopholes that,
in some cases, may prevent you from knowing about the sharing of your
personal information or saying 'no' before that information is passed
around. Plus, the law doesn't give you access to your information so
you can correct mistakes, which is important given that this
information may be used to determine your creditworthiness.
"Consumers should know that, while these rules do give them some
tools to protect their privacy, the underlying law still lets banks
and other institutions continue to share your personal information in
some cases without your knowledge or consent.
"Banks can't have it both ways - they can't say they care about
customer privacy at the same time that they're fighting for loopholes
in the law."
