tailieunhanh - FINANCIAL PRIVACY FOR FREE? US CONSUMERS’ RESPONSE TO FACTA

Several overarching themes emerged from interviews with stakeholders in the six case-study states regarding issues both internal and external to incentive programs that encourage and discourage the adoption of small-scale renewable energy technologies in their respective states. First, external factors will be discussed; illuminating the backdrop against which these incentive programs operate is important in understanding and assessing program performance. Following this discussion, the observations and lessons learned about the effectiveness of tax-credit, buy-down, and low-interest loan programs examined in this study will be presented, with an emphasis on the programmatic features and issues impacting their performance | FINANCIAL PRIVACY FOR FREE US CONSUMERS RESPONSE TO FACTA DRAFT - VERY PRELIMINARY Alessandro Acquisti Carnegie Mellon University acquisti@ Bin Zhang Carnegie Mellon University bzhang@ Abstract In December 2004 the three US credit reporting agencies - Equifax Experian and TransUnion -complied with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act FACTA and started providing free copies of their credit reports to any consumers who requested it. The FACTA initiative was overseen by the Federal Trade Commission FTC and was significant in many respects it was one of the first and largest initiatives by the federal government aiming at alleviating the rising concerns with identity theft it forced - an unusual move in the laissez faire panorama of US privacy legislation - private sector companies to offer some of their products and services for free to the general public and it required an uncommon concerted effort by the three credit agencies to provide reports to an estimated potential pool of 220 million US adults. However to date no data about the public response to the initiative has been provided by the FTC or the reporting agencies themselves. We present the results of a institution name s removed and Harris Interactive survey-based study of US consumers response to FACTA. The survey was based on a nationally representative sample of US adults and provides thefirst look at the success of the initiative as well as the likely motivations for requesting one s credit report. Such information can help us understand consumers interest in their financial information and indirectly their sensitivity towards the privacy of their financial data. Keywords Privacy Information Security Economics Identity Theft FACTA Consumer studies DRAFT - VERY PRELIMINARY 1 DRAFT - VERY PRELIMINARY Introduction Advances in information technology have made it possible to conduct banking credit and shopping activities online. However they have also exacerbated privacy risks. .