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You can swim freestyle. You can work freelance. And there are those among us who still hold up lighters and yell “Play Free Bird.” But for marketers, one thing you can’t do is advertise a product as free and then bill customers’ credit cards — not once and certainly not over and over and over again. The legal theories advanced in the pending case against Canadian Jesse Willms, ten companies the FTC says he controls, and other individual and...

With a corporate name like Lookout, it pays to — well — look out. Unfortunately, according to the FTC’s complaint against Lookout Services, Inc., the company’s questionable security practices left the door open for an employee of one of Lookout’s customers to access sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, of thousands of people. Lookout sells a web-based product called the I-9 Solution. Taking its name from Immigration Services...

The French movie classic “The Wages of Fear” — remade in 1977 as “The Sorcerer” by American director William Friedkin — was a taut thriller about a team of toughs transporting a payload of volatile nitroglycerine to a remote location in South America. They meet with hazards along the way: a rope bridge hanging by a thread over a flood-swollen river, a boulder blocking a twisted mountain path, and a stretch of road so pot-holed it’s called “The...

If you haven’t seen the ads, you’ve probably been too busy listening to eight-tracks and playing Pong because billions — with a capital B — have been served up online. They look like news investigations about acai berry weight loss products conducted by independent journalists for reputable news outlets featuring the logos of national media and follow-up comments by satisfied consumers. Except that according to the FTC, they’re not news...

Science, studies, and statistics. There’s a reason advertisers feature them so prominently. When used accurately, they can be powerful tools for distinguishing your product from the competitors. But scientific claims — especially health-related ones — need solid proof. That was the cause of the recent legal dust-up between the FTC and Oreck Corporation involving the Oreck Halo vacuum and the Oreck ProShield Plus portable room air cleaner. The...

Business practices at odds with promises in the company’s privacy policy. The failure to disclose adequately that the contacts with whom users emailed and chatted the most would become public by default. Confusing and hard-to-find controls to limit the sharing of personal info. False claims about adherence to the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor privacy framework. Those were the allegations in the FTC’s complaint against Google. What changes will the agency’s...

As any business knows, it is indeed a small world after all. And the FTC’s recent settlement with Google related to the launch of its Google Buzz social network demonstrates why it’s important for companies to think about the global ramifications of their privacy practices. In addition to concerns about allegedly deceptive representations in the company’s privacy policy and misleading practices that exposed information to public disclosure...

According to the FTC’s recent settlement with Google, when people declined to sign up for Google Buzz, the company’s new social network, Google nonetheless enrolled them in certain features without their consent. But what about people who clicked the link that said “Sweet! Check out Buzz”? The FTC’s complaint alleged that they, too, weren’t adequately informed that certain information that had been private — including the people they chatted with...

“Sweet! Check out Buzz.” “Nah, go to my inbox.” That was the intriguing choice facing Gmail users last year when Google launched Google Buzz, its social network. But according to a settlement announced this week by the FTC, the company violated the privacy promises it made to Gmail users and used deceptive tactics in the Buzz rollout. The story starts with Google’s privacy policy. From October 2004 until October 2010, Gmail users were told,...

Incessant phone calls to consumers, often about accounts that weren't theirs. Repeated autocalls to wrong numbers. Illegal disclosures to other people that a consumer owes money. Those are just some of the allegations in the FTC's recent settlement with West Asset Management, a debt collection company that employs more than 1,500 collectors in 13 states and one offshore location. According to the FTC's lawsuit filed in federal court in Atlanta...