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Privacy roundtables

Consumer Action hosts Privacy Roundtable discussions in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

During the month of February 2008, Consumer Action’s Outreach and Training team conducted two Privacy Roundtable meetings in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The purpose of the meetings was to gather critical feedback from community agencies in California on various privacy related issues, educational materials and resources for consumers and trainers.

The meetings were attended by local agencies serving low-income or wealth-challenged communities, women, immigrants, seniors, homeless, Section 8 / public housing residents, disabled, youth in foster care, high school-aged students and a many ethnic communities.

After carefully reviewing existing privacy literature, participants shared their expertise on developing more consumer-friendly brochures and outreach materials, as well as ways to insure the delivery of privacy information to a wide variety of audiences.

Representing a linguistically diverse population, groups voiced their need to have materials translated and transcreated into several languages to effectively educate their community members. Languages requested included not only Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese (many of Consumer Action’s publications are currently available in these languages) but also Japanese, Farsi, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Russian and Tagalog.

In addition, attendees engaged in a lively discussion about issues facing their communities, including skyrocketing foreclosures, unfair and predatory lending practices, increasing health care costs, unmanageable credit card debt, identity theft, and immigration. While exchanging best practices on educating their clients with regard to some of these issues, participants suggested topics for new materials that could potentially be developed by Consumer Action, such as how to deal with collection agencies and understanding financial aid loans.

Recognizing the need to put an end to abusive and unfair practices, groups expressed interest in collaborating with Consumer Action on both national and local advocacy efforts to support pro consumer legislation.

The invaluable input shared by all participating agencies will guide us in our efforts to provide the best tools and information to effectively reach out and educate consumers on protecting their privacy.