MilConsumer Blog Feed

By any measure, this year has been extraordinary. Our litigation workload continues to expand, with eight cases in various stages of administrative or federal court litigation and three on appeal. The latest, in which a unanimous Commission authorized staff to block the merger of the two largest providers of home mortgage loan origination systems and other key lender software tools, is an enormous undertaking, involving several horizontal and...

Last year the Bureau of Competition created its own Criminal Liaison Unit (“CLU”) as part of a Commission initiative to expand its existing criminal referral program and protect the public from criminal conduct. Headed by two former DOJ Antitrust Division criminal prosecutors, the CLU works with other BC staff to identify and refer to criminal prosecutors conduct uncovered during the course of FTC investigations and litigations. While the FTC is...

Prenotification plans, continuity programs, automatic renewals, free-to-pay conversions. They’re all variations on the negative option theme. Under the right circumstances, those marketing methods can be convenient for consumers. But as decades of FTC law enforcement makes clear, when negative options are tainted with untruths, half-truths, and hidden strings, the impact on consumers can be, well, negative. That’s why the FTC is asking for public...

Spend time on social media and video streaming platforms and what will you find? Photos from friends’ vacations, aspirational kale salads, the latest dance fads – and ads for bogus health products, financial scams, counterfeit goods, and the like. How many fraudulent ads appear on those platforms? We conservatively estimate it as . . . a whole lot. The FTC is asking Meta, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snap, Twitter, Pinterest, and Twitch for...

The FTC just released a Request for Information (RFI) on the business practices of Cloud Computing Providers. The RFI is a tool to gather information and inform the FTC’s understanding of cloud computing – we're interested in hearing about issues from users of cloud services, academics, civil society groups, industry participants, and more. Our interests are similar to those of other regulatory colleagues in the US [1] , UK [2] , France [3]...

The FTC is considering proposed changes to the Eyeglass Rule and has announced a May 18, 2023, public workshop , A Clear Look at the Eyeglass Rule . I f you have clients in the industry – or if you’re interested in consumers’ rights when shopping for glasses – you’ll want to read the Federal Register Notice to see how the issues are framed. The Ophthalmic Practice Rules – most people know it as the Eyeglass Rule – require ophthalmologists and...

You may have heard of simulation theory, the notion that nothing is real and we’re all part of a giant computer program. Let’s assume at least for the length of this blog post that this notion is untrue. Nonetheless, we may be heading for a future in which a substantial portion of what we see, hear, and read is a computer-generated simulation. We always keep it real here at the FTC, but what happens when none of us can tell real from fake? In a...

Is there a community, family, or workplace that hasn’t been impacted by addiction? For people struggling with substance use disorders, including those devastated by the opioid epidemic, claims made by the AWAREmed clinic must have seemed like – to quote the company’s ads – the “Light at the End of the Tunnel.” But according to a proposed FTC settlement , AWAREmed made a host of deceptive treatment claims, in violation of the FTC Act and the...

If small business is the engine that powers the American economy, business-to-business transactions are the gears that keep it running. But just as an error on a credit report can throw an unexpected wrench into the works for an individual consumer, an error on a small business credit report can bring even a well-designed business plan to a grinding halt. The FTC just launched an inquiry into the small business credit reporting system and has...

A deep dive into the technical side of FTC’s recent cases on digital health platforms, GoodRx & BetterHelp The Federal Trade Commission recently took enforcement action against GoodRx [1] and BetterHelp [2] , two digital healthcare platforms, for allegedly sharing user health data with third parties for advertising. Both cases highlighted the use of third-party tracking pixels, which enable platforms to amass, analyze, and infer information about...