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Scammers are all about spinning lies, but they still operate in the real world. Many scammers pretend to be well-known businesses to gain trust and make their stories seem more believable. [1] , [2]And scammers use real-world methods to contact people and to get paid. Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network point to some of their favorites. Let’s start with the most-impersonated companies. According to 2023 reports, Best Buy’s Geek Squad...

Most of the talk about dealmaking and antitrust enforcement focuses on large deals involving large companies. That’s because every year, the antitrust agencies get notice of larger deals—those currently valued at over $119.5 million—under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. But roll-up schemes, popular with private equity companies and other corporate actors, can be executed through a series of smaller acquisitions that individually fall below the...

The scientific community has a history of creating and sharing lists of important or interesting questions. The mathematician Paul Erdős, for example, famously doled out his questions to students and colleagues, some of which are unsolved to this day. [1] The Clay Mathematics Institute has its list of seven Millenium Problems, [2] six of which remain unsolved. Among these is the P = NP problem, [3] a fundamental question in computational...

If your business is covered by the FTC’s Gramm-Leach Bliley Safeguards Rule, an amendment to the Rule that requires covered companies to report certain data breaches and other security events to the FTC is now in effect – and we’ve made it easy for you to report.

Some say the car a person drives can say a lot about them. As cars get “connected,” this turns out to be truer than many people might have realized. While connectivity can let drivers do things like play their favorite internet radio stations or unlock their car with an app, connected cars can also collect a lot of data about people. This data could be sensitive—such as biometric information or location—and its collection, use, and disclosure can...

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 to...

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...

Today, the FTC announced four winners of the Voice Cloning Challenge, which was launched to address the present and emerging harms of artificial intelligence, or “AI”-enabled voice cloning technologies. The FTC received submissions from a wide range of individuals, teams, and organizations. The winners are outlined in the press release and on the Challenge website. The agency called for ideas that can be implemented during at least one of the...