How do students and parents consent to the data collected about students?
The groups also asked Congress for an audit of the advertising agency that placed the tracking devices to ensure that all the data collected about visitors to the drug policy office's Web site was deleted.
It will help write a report to Congress on what steps companies should take to keep their databases secure and how much access consumers should have to the data collected about them.
But, he added, "The meeting made me want to be more outspoken about these issues and in particular be outspoken about the vast amounts of data collected about our personal lives".
Carole Thompson, founder of the TAG! scheme, adds: "There's no barcode on the cards, so no one can make money as there's no personal data collected about individual customers".
While governmental efforts inch along, companies like Reputation.com are forging ahead with new services that promise consumers more insight into the data collected about them.
In a report earlier this year, the F.T.C. asked Congress to consider enacting regulations to give consumers some rights to data collected about them.
But Mr. Markey said consumers also needed greater access to data collected about them so they could make more informed choices.
Before his planned retirement from Congress at the end of next year, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat, intends to give American consumers more meaningful control over personal data collected about them online.
A leading children's advocacy group is challenging the educational technology software industry, an estimated $8 billion market, to develop national safeguards for the personal data collected about students from kindergarten through high school.
In a move intended to give parents greater control over data collected about their children online, federal regulators on Wednesday broadened longstanding privacy safeguards covering children's mobile apps and Web sites.
