MilConsumer Blog Feed

If businesses make coronavirus prevention or treatment claims for their products, it’s time to get up to speed on the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act . The Department of Justice and the FTC just filed their latest action under the law, seeking civil penalties from the marketers of Xlear, a nasal spray the complaint alleges has been deceptively advertised to offer “up to four hours” of protection from COVID-19 and as “part of a layered defense to...

Money-making claims have been around for as long as there’s been money. They show up in promotions for gig work, multilevel marketing, “be your own boss” seminars, and work-from-home offers. But when tried-and-true tactics turn into tried-and un true, the FTC has a long history of challenging deceptive claims related to money-making opportunities. Those misrepresentations are the subject of the FTC’s latest use of its penalty offense authority...

The Federal Trade Commission is aggressively hiring Technologists to help drive the agency’s work, ensure a vibrant technology marketplace, conduct investigations, and hold companies and people who violate the law accountable. If you’re a technology researcher, engineer, UX designer, content strategist, or product manager and are thinking about joining us in this new approach to our work, you may have some questions about working for the federal...

The FTC just released a report based on data received from major players in the mobile Internet market and A Look at What ISPs Know About You: Examining the Privacy Practices of Six Major Internet Service Providers is an eye opener. According to the FTC, several Internet service providers collect and share far more personal data than their customers expect while failing to give customers meaningful choice about how that data can be used. Under...

The FTC has been warning consumers for years about impersonation scams – calls that falsely claim to come from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, or other offices or businesses. The messages try to coerce people into making immediate payments or turning over sensitive personal information. The FTC’s latest Data Spotlight focuses on the rampant rise of Amazon impersonation scams that have already bilked consumers out of millions of...

Scammers impersonate all sorts of businesses, but reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel point to Amazon as a runaway favorite for scammers. From July 2020 through June 2021, about one in three people who reported a business impersonator said the scammer claimed to be Amazon. Reports about Amazon impersonators increased more than fivefold during this period. 1 About 96,000 people reported being targeted, and nearly 6,000 said they lost money...

Employing every available means to protect consumers from deceptive and misleading practices, the FTC recently announced the revitalized use of its statutory Penalty Offense Authority. More than 700 businesses – top consumer products companies, leading retailers and retail platforms, major ad agencies, and other names you know – are recipients of the latest Notice of Penalty Offenses aimed at curbing illegal practices in the use of endorsements...

When the financial future of millions of Americans is at stake, it’s important for the FTC to use every tool at its disposal to protect consumers from deceptive and unfair conduct. The FTC just announced the revitalized use of an existing method to hold companies accountable by imposing financial penalties for illegal acts. Seventy schools in the for-profit educational arena will be receiving a Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Deceptive or...

Given the recent surge in merger filings and the Commission’s obligation to protect Americans from illegal transactions, the Bureau of Competition is instituting new process reforms to best use its limited resources. These reforms build on other enhancements the Bureau announced in an August blog post . The Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act requires that companies provide the FTC and Department of Justice with advance notice of certain transactions...

The FTC was created to act as a guardian of fair markets, armed with broad authority to ensure our economy is one in which consumers, workers, and honest businesses can thrive. Chair Khan is committed to realizing that vision of an agency that takes on problems holistically, rather than from a consumer protection or competition lens alone. This means ensuring that the Commission’s two enforcement bureaus – the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau...