[{"source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","id":3197414,"description":"FTC challenges Online Trading Academy’s money-making claims lfair February 12, 2020 | 4:35PM FTC challenges Online Trading Academy’s money-making claims By Lesley Fair Ads for health products often target Boomer Consumers, but those aren’t the only claims pitched to people looking toward retirement. An FTC action alleges a company called Online Trading Academy has taken in more than $370 million by gearing its deceptive representations to that demographic. In addition, the complaint alleges violations of the Consumer Review Fairness Act. According to the FTC, the California-based operation, related companies, and three individual defendants advertise a “patented strategy” that consumers can apply “to any asset class including stocks, options, futures and currencies” to rake in big money. They claim their “training programs” – with price tags as high as $50,000 – will teach consumers how to “invest like the pros on Wall Street.” ”No matter your experience and goals,” people were told the defendants’ “proven” strategy was “designed to make money in any market, whether it’s going up or down.” The complaint recounts the process the defendants use to attract consumers through TV and radio ads, online promotions, and direct mail. First comes an in-person “preview” seminar. Next, people pay $299 for a three-day “orientation.” That’s where the defendants urge attendees to sign up for seminars costing thousands more. The defendants assign each attendee an “Education Counselor” – a/k/a salesperson working on commission – who follows up by phone or email. According to the complaint, the defendants train their Education Counselors not to “look like, act like or sound like, a traditional salesperson,” but instead to take on a “role” and lead consumers through “The Pain Funnel,” Q&A designed to overcome consumer qualms. To get people to sign up for more seminars, the defendants routinely offer to finance all or part of the cost with loans at 18%, with the promise to forgive the interest if the consumer pays the total off within six months. The FTC says that in some instances, the defendants lead buyers to believe they’ll be able to repay the loan quickly with money they’ll make using that “patented strategy.” So how much does Online Trading Academy say consumers will earn? A central theme of their pitch is “You don’t have to work on Wall Street to make money like Wall Street.” Infomercials feature purchasers claiming that “in three hours I made $12,000” or “I made $32,000 in less than seven trading days.” In a YouTube video, a retiree says he made “$40,000 in a single trade.” In addition, a speaker at a live event claimed consumers “could potentially make $50,000 of annual income with an account size as low as $5,000” because Online Trading Academy has “a patent on the fact that you can time the markets,” which “gives us the ability to know when to get in and when to get out, long-term and short-term.” Other speakers – including some of the named defendants – paint a picture of lavish lifestyles filled with international travel, a “super luxury car” every year, and homes in areas where kids have “live-in nannies, cooks, gardeners.” One speaker said the money he made using Online Trading Academy’s strategy allows him to live in an enclave so exclusive that a neighbor, a renowned Olympic gold medalist, taught his daughter to swim. But the facts paint a different picture. The FTC alleges the defendants don’t systematically collect data sufficient to substantiate their earnings claims. But even the evidence they do have gave them good reason to know their representations are deceptive. For starters, according to the FTC, the defendants know that few consumers who","pubDate":"Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:07:09 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2020/02/ftc-challenges-online-trading-academys-money-making-claims","titre":"FTC challenges Online Trading Academy’s money-making claims"},{"description":"Governor Newsom has signed California's AB 2244 , which creates the country's first voluntary non-ultraprocessed food certification program. By June 1, 2029, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) must develop a system to accredit independent certification agents that can certify food products as “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified.” The “Non-Ultraprocessed Certified” seal (proposed previously to be “California Certified”) may only be used for foods that do not qualify as an ultraprocessed food (UPF), UPF of concern, or a restricted food, as defined by California's UPF standards introduced in 2025. The program will allow certified products to display the seal on their packaging and will require manufacturers to recertify their products every three years. CDPH must create and maintain a public database of these certified products. Under the law, retailers with more than 25 individual non-UPF-certified product types and who generate more than $10 million in sales annually will be required to prominently display products with the seal. Earlier versions of the bill included tighter mandates for how these products are displayed and promoted, but these were removed from the final version. Governor Newsom signed AB 2244 along with other legislation that promote a “holistic healthcare strategy,” including AB 2030 (prohibiting the sale of over-the-counter diet pills or dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building to persons under 18) and SB 869 (requiring disclosures on restaurant menus for high added sugar content). Keller and Heckman will continue to monitor and report on developments in food-related","id":3192489,"source":"The Daily Intake","url":"https://www.dailyintakeblog.com/2026/10/governor-newsom-signs-bill-for-non-upf-certification-program/","titre":"Governor Newsom Signs Bill for Non-UPF Certification Program","pubDate":"Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:01:24 +0200"},{"pubDate":"Tue, 01 Sep 2026 08:10:10 +0200","titre":"FTC, States Sue Amazon Over Secret Ad Surcharge Scheme","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/08/ftc-states-sue-amazon-over-secret-ad-surcharge-scheme","id":3127461,"description":"Today, 22 states joined the Federal Trade Commission in filing suit against Amazon, alleging that the company engaged in deceptive and unfair practices that secretly inflated prices in its online search advertising auctions. The complaint   alleges that, for over seven years, Amazon has covertly and substantially increased the prices that more than one million brands and sellers were required to pay to advertise on its platform. As a result, the complaint alleges that Amazon’s scheme has likely extracted tens of billions of dollars from its unwitting advertising customers. “When one of the world’s largest online retailers engages in unfair and deceptive conduct, the impact can be staggering,” said Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson. “Amazon has millions of advertising customers who were misled into paying significantly higher prices. These higher costs were largely passed on to American consumers. The FTC under President Trump won’t allow this deception to continue.” The FTC, along with the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington, allege Amazon has imposed undisclosed surcharges on its advertising customers, which include over 500,000 small- and medium-sized businesses that participated in auctions for advertising placements on Amazon.com and its mobile app. In these auctions, prospective advertisers bid to place Sponsored Product ads, Sponsored Brands ads and Display Ads alongside the results that appear when a consumer searches for a product using a keyword on Amazon’s store. Placements are auctioned to the highest-ranked bidder for each keyword. As described in the complaint, Amazon has represented to prospective advertisers for years that Amazon runs “second price” auctions where the winner of the auction would only pay “one cent more than the next highest bidder” for each successful bid for an advertising keyword. However, in practice, the complaint alleges that Amazon has charged its Sponsored Products advertisers their own winning bid close to 80% of the time and has effectively converted its nominally “second price” auction into a first price auction. According to the complaint, Amazon’s “second price” auctions have been described by Amazon, and understood by advertisers, to be run as generalized second-price, or GSP auctions, which have been the accepted industry standard for digital advertising placements. The complaint states that Amazon has made these or similar representations on its website, in training videos and in other public-facing materials, as well as in presentations made to advertisers by its hundreds of sales personnel.  The type of auction matters to advertisers because it impacts how they bid. In a sealed first-price auction—the type of auction where winners pay the amount of their winning bid—bidders run the risk that they might overbid. So, in repetitive auctions for the same goods, they will often reduce their bid to determine what the minimum amount needed to win future auctions might be. This is called bid shading. In second-price auctions, bidders are more likely to bid higher, closer to their true value for the product, because they will only be liable to pay the least bid amount needed to win under the auction’s rules.  As alleged in the complaint, Amazon told advertisers it ran a GSP, but for years its auction pricing had “a surcharge hidden in it,” in the words of one internal Amazon document. The complaint alleges that, beginning in 2019, Amazon changed its auction rules without notice by adding an undisclosed surcharge that Amazon referred to internally as a “soft reserve price.” This resulted in advertisers paying substantially more than the price determined by the GSP auction.  According to the complaint, Amazon","source":"Federal Trade Commission - Protecting America's Consumers"},{"url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2025/support-edpbs-work-expert_en","titre":"Support the EDPB’s work as an expert","pubDate":"Wed, 03 Dec 2025 15:56:01 +0100","description":"Brussels, 28 November - The EDPB launched a call for expression of interest to establish a new reserve list for the Support Pool of Experts (SPE) programme . The objective is set up a reserve list of legal and technical experts. The legal expertise sought includes a wide range of fields, such as data protection, policy monitoring, technology, cybersecurity, competition, healthcare, online intermediary services and content moderation . As for the technical expertise , the relevant areas include IT auditing, website security, mobile OS and apps, Internet of Things, cloud-computing, behavioural advertising, anonymisation techniques, cryptology, artificial intelligence, User experience (UX) design, fintech , data science, social science (incl. economics, sociology, psychology), and development of applications and software . Bring your expertise to the table Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in this EDPB’s key strategic initiative. Your work will help Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) across Europe increase their capacity to supervise and enforce data protection rules and strengthen the protection of individuals’ fundamental rights. In 2022, the EDPB issued a call for expression of interest, which led to the establishment of a first SPE reserve list. As this list is set to expire in February 2026, the EDPB is inviting experts who were included in this first SPE reserve list to submit their application in response to the new call for expression of interest. The call will be open until August 2030. Learn how to submit your application . Apply now Background The SPE was developed as part of the EDPB Strategy 2021-2023 to help DPAs increase their enforcement capacity by developing common tools and giving them access to a wide pool of experts.   The EDPB aims to carry out approximately ten projects per year with pre-eminent external experts in a given field.  Projects are coordinated either by individual DPAs or by the EDPB. More information on the SPE and on completed project is available here . ","id":2548823,"source":"EDPB News"}]