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This week, just in time for the start of football ticket sales season, the FTC announced Bureau of Consumer Protection staff sent a warning letter to a company in the business. The issue? According to the letter, the ticket seller may have been violating the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees (Fees Rule), which went into effect May 12. The Fees Rule prevents deception by requiring businesses to display the total price for live-event tickets...

It’s advertising law 101: before you claim your product can perform a certain task, you need evidence it will work as promised. If your product doesn’t live up to the hype, you’ll have to deal with the consequences—which could include a potential FTC lawsuit. That’s the lesson from a recently announced settlement between the FTC and accessiBe, a company that advertised its online plug-in as a fully automated tool to make any website compliant...

According to the FTC’s latest Data Spotlight, text scam losses are skyrocketing. In 2024 people reported $470 million in losses to text scams, more than five times the amount reported in 2020. Check out the Data Spotlight for more information. Want to help your employees spot and avoid the most common text scams highlighted by the Data Spotlight? Check out the FTC’s Consumer Alert with details and advice. Here are a few examples of text scams...

It’s hard not to glance at your phone when you hear the ding of an incoming text. Scammers bet on it. And reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network suggest their odds of a big payout have improved: reported losses to text scams have skyrocketed even as the number of reports declined. In 2024, people reported $470 million in losses to these scams, more than five times the 2020 number. And since the vast majority of frauds are never reported, this number likely reflects only a fraction of the actual harm.

Fans want to know that when tickets to their favorite artist’s summer tour drop, they have a chance of getting good seats at face value. They don’t want to have to compete with people cheating the system by buying more tickets than allowed by the ticket seller. And they really don’t want to have to buy their tickets at seriously inflated prices from ticket resellers who cheated the system. That’s the problem Congress was trying to address with...

They say April showers bring May flowers. April also marks the one-year anniversary of the FTC’s Impersonation Rule, which gives the FTC more tools to fight impersonation scams that cost nearly $3 billion in reported losses during 2024. Impersonation scams hurt people and legitimate businesses. Here’s what the FTC is doing to fight these scams. Impersonators pretend to be someone they’re not to try to steal your money or personal information...

Maybe you’re opening a small business or hiring a household employee? Or you’re starting a nonprofit or administering an estate? If you’re creating or reorganizing a legal entity, chances are you’re going to need an Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-assigned Employer Identification Number (EIN) to file your taxes and confirm your organization’s identity. The IRS’s website has a free and easy tool to get one, but scammers don’t tell you that. Today...

Blizzards. Hurricanes. Floods. Wildfires. No matter the season, an extreme weather event or natural disaster could be right around the corner. And when – not if – an emergency happens, you may need to make critical decisions for your business, fast. Scammers know it's the perfect time to strike. Is your business ready? If you don’t already have a weather emergency plan, today’s the day to make one. The FTC has websites in English and Spanish to...

When businesses know the rules of the road, they can confidently invest in new ventures, technologies, and products. Under my leadership, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) is committed to providing legal clarity to legitimate businesses that wish to deal honestly with their customers and comply with the law. By offering clear and consistent rules of the road, legitimate businesses can comply with confidence. Businesses that choose not...

The FTC recently filed a case to stop what it describes as a fast-moving scam involving a group of companies offering business opportunities and a supposed credit repair service. Although the names and details changed as the alleged scam evolved, the FTC says the defendants’ business opportunities had at least one thing in common: misleading promises that people could earn a lot of money with relatively little effort. And when it came to the...