The pandemic's unexpected privacy pitfalls

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Americans' rush to move all aspects of their lives online during the pandemic — classes, meetings, legal proceedings, shopping and more — left many vulnerable to exposure, exploitation and fraud.Why it matters: The digital environment wasn't always ready to deal with newcomers' privacy and security needs. And the people responsible for managing these activities couldn't foresee all the pitfalls of moving online. Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free'We have a perfect storm: a public that is more attuned to seeing misinformation, a pandemic where more and more people are doing things online from their homes, and stress and anxiety,' said Ari Lightman, a professor of marketing and media at Carnegie Mellon University.'We're going to have to do a reality check. We spent a year buying things and setting stuff up online. I think we need to do some digital hygiene. What are we signed up for?'Acting FTC chairwoman Rebecca Slaughter told Axios: 'As our lives have moved online, that has real implications for the exposure of personal data' that companies collect for 'surveillance capitalism ad tech models, the generation of algorithms and the provision of health services.'But it shouldn't be up to individuals to clean up their own post-pandemic digital trails, Slaughter said, pointing to the need for national privacy legislation. 'A lot of the changes we've made to online are going to stick, so we need to make sure we set appropriate deterrence levels for corporate behavior and we effectively enforce the laws we have before bad actions and patterns get baked in.'The big picture: 'Virtual interactions during the pandemic are presenting privacy issues at scale in a way that can be really challenging,' said John Verdi, president of the Future of Privacy Forum, a privacy think tank in Washington. What's happening: In some institutions and companies, new pandemic-era responsibilities led to better privacy and cybersecur