: The Federal Trade Commission finalized orders requiring Cox Media Group (CMG) and two other firms to pay a total of $930,000 to settle allegations they deceived customers by falsely claiming to offer an AI-powered service that could target localized ads based on conversations captured from consumers’ smart devices and that consumers had opted into such targeting. In three separate complaints first announced in May , the FTC alleged that Georgia-based media and marketing company CMG Media Corporation, which does business as Cox Media Group , and two marketing firms it worked with, New Hampshire-based MindSift LLC and Wisconsin-based 1010 Digital Works LLC , deceived customers by claiming they used a special algorithm to listen in on and detect pertinent conversations from smart devices in order to target ads to consumers within a specific geographic region. Contrary to these companies’ claims, however, the marketing service wasn’t based on voice data, and consumers hadn’t opted into this service. If the s[...]
: We can’t go for that (no can do) lfair July 17, 2017 | 11:38AM We can’t go for that (no can do) By Lesley Fair Of course, phantom debt collection – the practice of pressuring people to pay “debts” they don’t owe – harms consumers. But as an FTC complaint demonstrates, when phantom debt collectors strike, they could affect your company, too. According to the FTC , a Florida-based outfit engaged in a scheme to defraud consumers through the collection of debts people didn’t actually owe or the company didn’t have the authority to collect. The complaint charges that the defendants – Hardco Holding Group, S & H Financial Group, Dequan M. Sicard, and Daryl M. Hall (no, not that Daryl Hall) – violated the FTC Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. When contacting consumers, in many instances the defendants allegedly impersonated attorneys and threatened to have people thrown in jail if they didn’t pay up on delinquent payday loans – loans, remember, that many consumers didn’t take out in the first place and de[...]