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Aqua Finance provided financing for water treatment equipment sold door-to-door by dealers. But according to the FTC, the company filtered out the truth and left a sediment of deceptive and unfair financing practices that put many consumers in unexpected debt and made it more difficult for some of them to sell their homes. The result: a proposed $43.6 million settlement with tough injunctive provisions that will change how the company does business going forward. Even if financing isn’t part of your business, read on for details about how the FTC says Aqua Finance also violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act, including a first-of-its-kind complaint allegation.

According to Aesop, you’re known by the company you keep. Put in the FTC context, you’re known by the companies you keep as clients. That’s the message of a $10 million proposed settlement with payment processing company BlueSnap, Inc., a related corporate defendant, former CEO Ralph Dangelmaier, and Senior Vice President Terry Montieth.

We’re delighted to celebrate National Small Business Week from April 28th to May 4th. The FTC is proud to champion the interests of small businesses throughout the year by challenging unfair or deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition. Here are seven recent examples of how the FTC works to ensure that small businesses get a fair shake in the marketplace.

We usually wait until the end of a Business Blog post before offering a compliance pointer or two. But this time let’s lead off with two lessons that companies can learn from the FTC’s record-setting $3.17 million settlement with home and kitchenware company Williams-Sonoma. First, don’t make deceptive Made in USA claims. Second, once you sign an FTC order settling charges that you falsely advertised foreign-made items as Made in USA, don’t make those same misrepresentations again.

It's a recurring trope in caper movies. An unsuspecting person exits an airplane, sees a driver with their name on a sign, and thinks they’re getting transportation to their destination. Of course, the “driver” is really in on the scheme and takes them somewhere without their permission. According to an FTC complaint, bill payment company Doxo has engaged in analogous conduct when consumers searched online for how to pay bills they owed to certain companies. The complaint – which names Doxo, CEO and co-founder Steve Shivers, and Vice President and co-founder Roger Parks – says the defendants use deceptive tactics to trick people into thinking they are in contact with the company in question and then tack millions in junk fees onto consumers’ bills.

It was Shakespeare who said, “Once more unto the breach.” The FTC’s goal is never more unto the breach, but until companies keep health data secure and private, we’ll continue to update and enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to protect consumers and keep up with the digital revolution in health information. Benefited by insights from researchers, industry members, legislators, and consumers who responded to our call for public comments, the FTC just finished a head-to-toe HBNR check-up. The just-announced Final Rule makes it clear that health apps and similar technologies are covered and expands what covered entities must tell consumers if there’s been a breach of their data. How will the new rule affect your business?

The FTC’s Tech Summit on AI 1 convened three panels that highlighted different layers of the AI tech stack: hardware and infrastructure, data and models, and consumer-facing applications. This third Quote Book is focused on consumer-facing applications. This post outlines the purpose of the quote book, a summary of the panel, and relevant topics and actions raised by the FTC. Purpose of the quote book A key component of the FTC’s work is to...

The FTC’s Tech Summit on AI [1] convened three panels that each highlighted different layers of the AI tech stack: hardware and infrastructure, data and models, and front-end user applications. This second Quote Book is focused on data and models . This post outlines the intended purpose of the quote book, a summary of the panel, and relevant topics and actions raised by the FTC. Purpose of the quote book A key component of the FTC’s AI work is...

For more than two decades, the FTC has been bringing enforcement actions for violations of national consumer protection laws due to companies’ poor security practices. These poor practices have included failure to encrypt sensitive data, storing credentials in source code, failing to test for common vulnerabilities, and failure to use multi-factor authentication, among others. To remedy these practices, the orders the FTC has obtained in these...

What will it take to get businesses to honor the promises they make about the privacy of consumers’ health data? Multiple FTC law enforcement actions in the past year? Two more cases against companies that shared health information with third-party advertising platforms without people’s consent? Here’s the loud-and-clear message companies need to hear: The FTC won’t back down in the fight to protect the privacy of consumers’ sensitive health data.