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About
Pam Dixon is an author, researcher, and the executive director and founder of the World Privacy Forum, an internationally recognized non-profit public interest research group focused on conducting research on societal and human rights topics, particularly those where privacy intersects with technology. Dixon has written seven books for major publishers and has published hundreds of articles, as well as influential privacy research and studies. Her work focuses on emerging issues, and often intersects with technology-related issues.
Dixon's work in privacy includes substantive longitudinal research studies which are much-cited and highly regarded, as well as journal articles and testimony before lawmakers and state and federal agencies, as well as work with the international community. Dixon speaks frequently as an expert lecturer in the US and abroad. She also works with other NGOs to create consensus on key issues in privacy. Dixon's research studies have led to the creation of new consumer protection laws at the federal and state level.
Dixon's current research work in privacy is focused in the area of health, online privacy, workplace, and data flows (including Internet and trans-border data flows). Her work often breaks critical new ground, for example, she was the first to explore the topic of medical identity theft, documenting the crime and its impact on victims for the first time in a major report. In addition to her national and international work at the World Privacy Forum, Dixon serves as co-chair of the California Privacy and Security Advisory Board, a state level board which reports to the California Secretary of Health. She is also on the board of HITSP, the national Health Information Technology Standards Panel. In 2010 and 2011, she conducted groundbreaking research in India which will be published as part of her work on global privacy.
Prior to founding the World Privacy Forum, Dixon was a researcher at the Denver University School of Law's Privacy Foundation during Richard M. Smith's tenure there. While there, her work focused on workplace and job applicant privacy, including a study on resume databases and the first study to document privacy issues in the online job search industry and online job searching sites.
Dixon has also written extensively about technology both as a book author and as a former New Media columnist for the San Diego Union Tribune. She wrote the first book to ever be published about the subject of online job searching, a book for Random House / Times Books which went on to be a finalist for the Computer Press Awards. Her book on distance education is a classic and is used in college classrooms today. Dixon is frequently quoted in the media regarding privacy and consumer rights issues. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Fortune, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, Business Week, The Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, The San Francisco Chronicle, Reader's Digest, USA Today, the Sunday Times (London), Wissen (Germany), and many others have featured and quoted Dixon. Dixon's television appearances include segments on Good Morning America, CBS News' "48 Hours," the BBC, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, PBS, MSNBC and NPR. A selection of her press clippings are located here.
Contact Information
Pam Dixon can be reached via the World Privacy Forum.
- Office : 760.436.2489 (Pacific)
- Email : info2009 (at) worldprivacyforum (dot) org
- Facebook: Pam Dixon
- Secure email: If you would like to send secure email, click here for a PGP key <secure email>.
Schedule
Regularly scheduled items include the weekly ClearChannel radio segment Thursday mornings, and bi-monthly and quarterly CalPSAB and HITSP board meetings. For the schedule of workshops, lectures, conferences, and other events, please see the schedule page.
Press Archive
Please see the Press Page for an archive / index of press clippings from 1995 to present.