MilConsumer Blog Feed

As a result of a $3.5 million FTC settlement , Vision Path – the online seller of Hubble contacts – must eye its legal responsibilities through a stronger lens. But even if your business isn’t covered by the Contact Lens Rule, don’t blink or you could miss an important FTC message about the appropriate use of endorsements and customer reviews. The Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act and the Contact Lens Rule require prescribers to...

Social media is a gold mine for scammers , and in the latest FTC Data Spotlight , we’re digging deeper into this deceptive trend happening across social media platforms. Why do we repeatedly ask people to file reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov to let us know when they spot questionable conduct? Because – among other things – the FTC and law enforcement members of the Consumer Sentinel Network use that information to spot, track, and ultimately...

Online customer reviews of products and services have become increasingly important in the marketplace. Many consumers rely on them to decide what to buy or where to buy it, and many companies rely on them to attract customers and stand out from the pack. That was true even before the pandemic hit, and it’s even more true now. Consumers should be able to trust that these reviews reflect the honest opinions of actual customers. But some businesses...

It’s the oldest trick in the book: Now you see it, now you don’t . This illusion is fine on a Las Vegas stage, but on an online retailer’s website, making negative reviews disappear is hardly magical. The FTC calls it review suppression – and companies engaging in this practice will be held accountable. In its first case challenging a company’s failure to post negative reviews as a deceptive practice, the FTC has reached a proposed settlement...

Social media permeates the lives of many people – we use it to stay in touch, make new friends, shop, and have fun. But reports to the FTC show that social media is also increasingly where scammers go to con us. More than one in four people who reported losing money to fraud in 2021 said it started on social media with an ad, a post, or a message. [1] In fact, the data suggest that social media was far more profitable to scammers in 2021 than any...

Shoppers can find a plethora of apps, trackers, and sensors that hold or capture almost every conceivable form of personal health information. If your business or nonprofit offers products like that or provides certain services to entities that do – and you aren’t subject to HIPAA – you may be covered by the FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR). The FTC has two new publications to help determine if the Rule applies to you and the steps...

The Omicron variant has consumers saying “Omigosh,” but even before the current surge, advertisers have been using questionable COVID-related claims to promote their products. FTC staff sent 25 more Cease and Desist Demands to businesses, most of whom have made unsubstantiated prevention or treatment representations for tinctures, teas, and sundry services. But there’s a key point that differentiates these Demands from the more than 400 letters...

Small businesses, the FTC is on your side. According to a proposed FTC settlement with Dun & Bradstreet , D&B took big bucks from small businesses with the promise to improve their credit reports, but the primary business that benefited from D&B’s pricey services was Dun & Bradstreet itself. The FTC alleges that Dun & Bradstreet deceived companies about the purported benefits of its CreditBuilder line of products; used deceptive automatic renewal...

Log4j is a ubiquitous piece of software used to record activities in a wide range of systems found in consumer-facing products and services. Recently, a serious vulnerability in the popular Java logging package, Log4j (CVE-2021-44228) was disclosed, posing a severe risk to millions of consumer products to enterprise software and web applications. This vulnerability is being widely exploited by a growing set of attackers. When vulnerabilities are...

As a certain elusive children’s videogame character will attest, precise geolocation can be highly sensitive information. According to a settlement the FTC just announced with OpenX Technologies, Inc. – a real-time bidding platform that enables targeted advertising on websites and apps – OpenX deceived people about their right to opt out of the collection of precise location data. What’s more, OpenX collected personal information from kids under...