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The Bureau of Consumer Protection is deeply honored to recognize one of its most distinguished alumnae, Jodie Bernstein, as she celebrates her 100 th Birthday. For Jodie, one of the Commission’s distinguished Miles W. Kirkpatrick Award recipients, this marks yet another milestone in a life filled with extraordinary accomplishments. Her career, in many ways, mirrors the history of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Jodie first joined the...

Protecting workers and ensuring competitive labor markets is a top priority for the FTC and the agency’s Labor Task Force. By maximizing the agency’s jurisdiction and interdisciplinary expertise, the FTC is confronting challenges facing American workers. Take, for example, the announced settlement of a case brought by the FTC and eleven states against Walmart, Inc., which resolves allegations that the company misrepresented how much drivers for its delivery service, Spark Driver, would earn through tips, base pay, and incentives. The lawsuit alleges that Walmart’s practices caused drivers to lose millions of dollars in expected earnings.

Exclusive contracts are vertical arrangements that restrict one or both parties to the contract from doing business with anyone else. These contracts may have pro-competitive benefits such as reducing costs and discouraging free riding. However, a firm may also use exclusive contracts to deny a rival sufficient scale to compete. Any analysis of the effects of exclusive contracts on competition must weigh the potential pro-competitive and anti...

Your small business likely has had many milestones. Hiring your first employee. Opening your doors for the first time. Making your first sale. But some milestones you’d probably rather avoid — like experiencing your first cyberattack. Think you’re too small to target? Think again. Cybercriminals target companies big and small, so this Data Privacy Day keep your business’s data (and your customers’ data) safe by reviewing the FTC’s updated resources at ftc.gov/cybersecurity.

Each year, the Commission adjusts the minimum dollar jurisdictional thresholds that determine reportability under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act based on the change in gross national product in the prior year, as mandated by the HSR Act. The 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act established tiers of filing fees based on the size of the transaction. The thresholds for these filing fees, as well as the fee amounts, are also adjusted annually along...

If you represent, coach, recruit, or otherwise work with student athletes, you probably know about the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA). Since 2004, SPARTA has protected student athletes as they navigate contracts with sports agents and agencies. Today, the FTC sent letters to 20 universities — all with NCAA Division I sports programs — asking if sports agents representing their student athletes are notifying the schools as required under SPARTA.

Accepts pets? Affordable rent? Close to work? Whatever the must-haves are for your next rental home, you can bet there’s a fake listing that checks all the boxes. Since 2020, people have reported nearly 65,000 rental scams to the FTC with about $65 million in losses. [1] And since most scams are never reported to a government agency, this likely reflects only a fraction of the actual harm. [2] Scammers create fake rental listings that look very...

Consumers often rely on reviews to help them choose between everything from home repair companies to apartments to lawyers. When those reviews reflect honest feedback from real people who have actually used a product or service, the feedback can be invaluable. When companies try to game the review system — by using fake reviews or providing money or incentives for only positive reviews — they distort the marketplace and harm consumers relying on reviews to make purchasing decisions. That’s why today the FTC sent warning letters to alert a number of companies of potential violations of the Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials.

Price can be one of the most important factors people consider when looking for housing. But what happens when the rental price advertised doesn’t represent the price your tenants end up paying? According to the FTC’s recent settlement with Greystar — the largest owner and operator of rental apartments in the country — the answer is: nothing good.

The FTC is committed to fighting illegal telemarketing. For proof, look no further than the recently announced settlement with Citizens Disability, LLC and its subsidiary, CD Media, LLC (collectively, “Citizens”), which sell services to assist consumers with Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) claims. According to the FTC, Citizens was responsible for tens of millions of illegal telemarketing calls that often sought to mislead consumers seeking information about their benefits.