: Root, root root for the regions lfair September 24, 2018 | 2:03PM Root, root root for the regions By Andrew Smith, Director, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection T his year eight major league baseball teams are celebrating milestone anniversaries – and so are the FTC’s regional offices. In 1918, the Commission opened the first three of its regional offices. Today, eight regional offices continue to knock it out the park on behalf of America’s consumers. So it’s only fitting that on this momentous day we acknowledge the regional offices’ century of pennant-winning performances. According to the Commission’s 1918 Annual Report, “In order to expedite the greatly increased work of the Commission . . . small branch offices were established in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.” Over time, the FTC has added other locations for a current total of eight offices in seven regions. Regional staff work with the Bureau of Consumer Protection and the Bureau of Competition on investigations and litigation. But they are in [...]
: Judge orders $13.4 million in contempt action challenging BlueHippo hype lfair May 2, 2016 | 10:52AM Judge orders $13.4 million in contempt action challenging BlueHippo hype By Lesley Fair Animation fans remember the ballet-dancing pink hippos in Fantasia . In Egyptian mythology, the god of disorder was depicted as a red hippo. And many consumers – especially those already in financial distress – were drawn in by national TV and radio ads for BlueHippo, a company that claimed to finance the purchase of computers and other electronics for people with “less than perfect credit, bad credit, no credit.” A $13.4 million ruling by a United States District Judge in an FTC contempt action sends a message to hippos of all hues (and businesses) about the FTC’s commitment to effective order enforcement. In 2008, the FTC sued BlueHippo Funding and BlueHippo Capital for, among other things, not delivering ordered merchandise, failing to make disclosures required by the Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, and illegally[...]
: FTC sues American Immigration Center for claiming false government affiliation lfair October 16, 2018 | 12:16PM FTC sues American Immigration Center for claiming false government affiliation By Lesley Fair When the FTC warns consumers about government imposter scams, we’re usually referring to bogus calls that falsely claim to come from the IRS or some other official office. But as a case just announced by the FTC demonstrates, that’s not the only kind of false government affiliation that can deceive consumers. A $2.2 million settlement with American Immigration Center reminds other businesses of the dangers of conveying a misleading connection to a government agency. When consumers wanted to renew their green cards or apply for naturalization, where did they go? Online, of course, where they input terms like “USCIS,” “INS,” or “US Immigration” to search for the proper government site. According to the FTC, that’s how they ran across results with tag lines like “USCIS Forms – Easy Online Forms for Green Card[...]
: FTC consumer protection year in review offers 2020 vision for your business lfair January 8, 2020 | 9:26AM FTC consumer protection year in review offers 2020 vision for your business By Lesley Fair They say hindsight is 20/20, but what about foresight? We’re not ones to prognosticate, but a look at notable FTC cases and initiatives from the past year suggests some topics likely to be top of mind in months to come. Here is a non-exhaustive list of issues in our 2019 rearview mirror and likely visible through the 2020 windshield. Consumer privacy. The FTC’s $5 billion enforcement action against Facebook made history and headlines, but the other notable part of the case is the monumental change the order mandates to Facebook’s privacy ecosystem. The Commission opinion in Cambridge Analytica reaffirms the proposition that like any other claim, a company’s privacy promises are viewed through the lens of established FTC consumer perception principles. A series of cases demonstrates the agency’s continued commitmen[...]
: The Federal Trade Commission’s initial findings from its surveillance pricing market study revealed that details like a person’s precise location or browser history can be frequently used to target individual consumers with different prices for the same goods and services. The staff perspective is based on an examination of documents obtained by FTC staff’s 6(b) orders sent to several companies in July aiming to better understand the shadowy market that third-party intermediaries use to set individualized prices for products and services based on consumers’ characteristics and behaviors, like location, demographics, browsing patterns and shopping history. Staff found that consumer behaviors ranging from mouse movements on a webpage to the type of products that consumers leave unpurchased in an online shopping cart can be tracked and used by retailers to tailor consumer pricing. “Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods[...]
: A clothes look at the RN database: Q&A with FTC staff lfair October 5, 2017 | 11:18AM A clothes look at the RN database: Q&A with FTC staff By Lesley Fair It’s not much bigger than a postage stamp, but the label on many textile, wool, and fur products provides important information, including fiber content, country of origin, and a company name or Registered Identification Number (RN). The FTC administers the RN system and industry members will want to check out recent upgrades to the RN website . With RNs and labels on our mind, we asked some common RN-related questions to attorney Josh Millard, whom we’d label as one of the FTC’s go-to people on the subject. First things first. What’s an RN? JOSH: A Registered Identification Number (RN) is a numerical designation – the prefix RN followed by a set of digits – that identifies the company responsible for marketing, distributing or otherwise handling a product covered by the Textile, Wool, and Fur Acts. Because some labels are small and some company names a[...]