Guardians at the gate More protections in place for American consumer in 2011

It would be understandable if American consumers are feelingvulnerable, given the consumer-protection news headlines in recentyears: Recalls of millions of baby cribs and Toyotas. Food-bornecontamination outbreaks in eggs, peanut butter and spinach, amongother food categories. Then there are concerns over the tracking ofour every move on the Internet.

It's no surprise, then, that consumer protection - keepingpeople, and especially children, safe - will be a hot topic in 2011.

The new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, for example,will address such financial topics as credit cards and mortgages.

For industry, many of the changes mean more regulation andpotentially more hassle and expense to comply with new rules.

Here are three of the most important consumer-protectiondevelopments:

Dangerous products By March, a dangerous-products database willbe made available online by the Consumer Product Safety Commissionat SaferProducts.gov.

Why is this a big deal? Currently, consumers have no centralizedplace to easily research products that might be harmful, whetherthey own the items now or are thinking of buying them.

"It's so necessary because consumers don't have access to theinformation they need to make decisions about consumer products,"said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety at the ConsumerFederation of America. "Right now there's no resource that existslike this for consumers. It's only after there have been injuriesand deaths that a consumer finds out."

Ideally, a trip to SaferProducts.gov would become as common ascomparing product prices online. "I think it will become part of aconsumer's buying process," she said.

The searchable site will contain reports of harmful orpotentially harmful products received from consumers, governmentagencies, health care professionals and others. It will allowconsumers to research potentially dangerous products before they arerecalled - before someone may get injured or dies. It also willallow an easy way for consumers to file reports online.

Companies that make the products will have the opportunity tocomment on those reports. Most reports will be available onlinewithin 15 days of being filed, the CPSC has said.

Consumers filing reports will have to provide contactinformation, but their personal data will not be published online.The online database will include only new reports, not reports fromprevious years. The same information is available now but under aslow and cumbersome process through the Freedom of Information Act.

Food safety The Food Safety Modernization Act - the first majorfood-regulation overhaul in more than 70 years - had bipartisansupport in Congress but was tripped up late in 2010 because of aprocedural goof with the legislation. After nearly being left fordead, the bill was suddenly resurrected and passed on Dec. 21.

The new law takes a proactive approach to food safety by tryingto prevent dangerous contaminations instead of reacting only whenpeople get sick or die. Most consumers might be shocked to learn theFood and Drug Administration rarely inspects many food facilitiesand farms, visiting some every decade or so and others not at all.

Each year, 76 million Americans are sickened, 325,000hospitalized, and 5,000 die from eating contaminated food, accordingto the Centers for Disease Control.

The new law will put in place many safeguards Americans thoughtthey already had, said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for food safetyissues at Consumers Union. For example, the FDA will have power toinitiate a recall. Under the old law, the FDA had to coax companiesto recall contaminated foods, and occasionally they refused.

Online privacy As you surf the Internet, Web sites track youractivity and serve up information about you to advertising networks.That's why you might see advertising related to a search yourecently completed, for example. You might find that helpful - orinvasive.

So the Federal Trade Commission in December issued a reportadvocating safeguards, including a "do not track" mechanism thatwould give consumers the option of keeping their Web surfing privatefrom companies who would track their moves online. It might be afunction of Web browsers that would send notice to Web sitetrackers, essentially saying, "Leave me alone." The CommerceDepartment and a committee in the House of Representatives were alsolooking at the issue in December, and public comments on the FTCreport are due Jan. 31. So, it's an issue likely to see action in2011, privacy activists say.