PROTECTING YOUR CHILD’S PERSONAL INFORMATION AT SCHOOL

Back to school — an annual ritual that includes buying new notebooks, packing lunches, coordinating transportation, and filling out forms: registration forms, health forms, permission slips, and emergency contact forms, to name a few.

Many school forms require personal and, sometimes, sensitive information. Find out how your child’s information is collected, used, stored, and thrown away. Your child’s personal information is protected by law. Asking schools and other organizations to safeguard your child’s information can help minimize your child’s risk of identity theft.

A child’s Social Security number can be used by identity thieves to apply for government benefits, open bank and credit card accounts, apply for a loan or utility service, or rent a place to live. Check for a credit report to see if your child’s information is being misused. Take immediate action if it is.

Check out the FTC consumer alert located at:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0040-child-identity-theft

The Federal Courts in Utah and California have taken the position that using hidden proxies to register your domains and conceal your true identity is a violation of the Can-Spam Act, Section 7704(a)(1)(C) and is materially misleading because a recipient cannot identify the sender from the “from” name or the publicly available whois information.

The court further stated that since all ICCAN approved domain name vendors must have a prohibition against using the domain for sending SPAM, using any ICCAN approved vendor is prohibited and therefore misleading and a violation of the Can-Spam Act.  (I think this was a very far reach for the court and would be overturned on appeal.  However, who has the money to file an appeal?)

The California Court also said that putting disclosures in images violates the Can-Spam Act’s requirement for conspicuous postings since images can be lost in transmission or lost due to technical difficulties.