From the San Jose Mercury News
California group creates complaint center for online privacy issues
By Mike Swift
In an attempt to create a central online directory for privacy complaints against social networks and websites, a California group on Tuesday launched a service that allows people to share privacy problems with government agencies, lawyers or journalists.
The San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse is one of a handful of nonprofit advocacy groups across the country that monitor online privacy issues, and the group says that's part of the problem: There is no centralized easy-to-use place where consumers can file an online complaint about a privacy breach. PRC's new complaint center, at www.privacyrights.org/complaint, is intended to fill that gap....
The effort to create the complaint center began after a 2009 study by UC Berkeley's School of Information and its law school. The "KnowPrivacy" study found that while consumers were not aware of the personal data collection practices used by websites and social networks to track their movements online, they nevertheless wanted more control over their personal information. Consumers also are confused, the study found, about where they can go to make a complaint....
The KnowPrivacy project began as a 2009 master’s final project, with a follow-up research report in August 2009.