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January 29th kicks off 2024’s Identity Theft Awareness Week, but consumer-conscious companies promote identity theft awareness – and prevention – 52 weeks a year. As the FTC, federal and state agencies, consumer groups, and others sponsor events across the country and online, here are three things your business can do to promote identity theft awareness to customers, employees, and members of your community.

When consumers have questions about a company’s services, they often pick up the phone and call. It’s no different when consumers must select a funeral home to handle a loved one’s final arrangements. Telephone inquiries are particularly important for people who are grieving a loss or making arrangements for a loved one in a different city. That’s why the Funeral Rule requires funeral homes to provide accurate price information over the phone. The results of an undercover FTC phone sweep suggests that some providers would benefit from a compliance refresher – especially when it comes to how they handle telephone inquiries.

The launch of OT coincided with another type of technology’s rapid growth: Artificial Intelligence. And, on January 25th, OT will hold the FTC Tech Summit on AI to lead discussions among individuals with a diverse set of perspectives across academia, industry, civil society organizations, and government agencies. These conversations will cover AI across the layers of the technology stack—from computer microprocessors and cloud infrastructure to data and models to consumer applications.

The FTC announced proposed revisions to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule on December 20, 2023. The online portal to file public comments is now open and the FTC welcomes your feedback by the March 11, 2024, deadline.

It should come as no surprise that companies and individuals that knowingly possess documents and information that may be relevant to an antitrust investigation must maintain that information under federal law and Commission rules. The responsibility to preserve documents exists across all types of media. As workplaces have evolved, so too have the means by which workers communicate and collaborate. In many of today’s companies, hard-copy...

Data is at the heart of AI development. Developing AI models can be a resource intensive process, requiring large amounts of data and compute, [1] and not all companies have the capacity to develop their own models. Some companies, which we refer to as “model-as-a-service” companies in this post, develop and host models to make available to third parties via an end-user interface or an application programming interface (API). For example, a...

If you’ll be seeing college-age relatives over the holidays, warn them about a variation on the “job interview” scam that students looking for summer or permanent employment have reported to us. And warn your human resources staff that crooks may be misusing your company name as part of the scheme. Virtual job scams are nothing new, but they’ve taken a personal – and persuasive – turn. College students report they’ve been contacted on social...

In the face of concerns about anticompetitive conduct, companies may claim privacy and security reasons as justifications for refusing to have their products and services interoperate with other companies’ products and services. As an agency that enforces both competition and consumer protection laws, the Commission is uniquely situated to evaluate claims of privacy and data security that implicate competition. There are important benefits to...

“Not all voice actors are celebrities or well-known voices,” said Tim Friedlander, President of the National Association of Voice Actors and voice of CBS’s Professional Bull Riders. “Most are blue collar, working class voice actors who are working 40 plus hours a week. Over 60% of the voice actors are located outside of LA and New York. We’re not anti-tech or anti-AI, as many have said before.” There are many perspectives on generative AI...

You’ve heard about the deceptive tactics of government imposters. According to a proposed FTC settlement, a Florida company made misleading Made in USA claims, falsely described itself as “veteran-operated,” and didn’t live up to its promise to donate 10% to military charities. It looks like Uncle Sam needs to watch out for an imposter we call Uncle Sham.