Blog

1970 saw the ban of cigarette advertising on TV, the debut of Doonesbury, the inaugural flight of the Boeing 747, and the start of the New York City Marathon. Another notable 1970 first celebrating its 50th anniversary this week: the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the nation’s first consumer financial privacy statute. A review of 50 years of enforcement suggests that the law has been worth its weight in gold to consumers. But it also demonstrates...

Executives and employees of modern businesses communicate with one another, and with suppliers and customers, in a wide variety of ways. Especially with the current challenges of in-person meetings, electronic exchanges are now the norm for doing business. Emails, memoranda, voicemails, SMS/text messages, instant messages, hard copy notes and collaborative documents are all routinely created and circulated in the ordinary course. It should come...

Whether it’s a bogus message claiming your trademarks are about to expire unless you transfer money immediately or threats to ruin your credit if you don’t pay for unordered office supplies, scammers have small businesses in their sights. You can help the FTC and its partners fight fraud and you don’t even need to wear a superhero cape (unless you want to). Your story is your superpower. When you tell the FTC about frauds, scams, and other kinds...

Pardon our pride, but we’re delighted to report that the most recent recipient of the Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership is Lois Greisman, Associate Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Presented annually since 1978 by American University’s School of Public Affairs, the Roger W. Jones Award honors public servants in the federal government whose careers are marked by “outstanding executive leadership.” We can’t think of...

Social media can be a great way to connect with friends while the pandemic has you keeping your distance. But reports to FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network suggest that that social media websites and apps have become popular hangouts for scammers, too. Reports that people lost money to scams that started on social media 1 more than tripled in the past year, with a sharp increase in the second quarter of 2020. Reports about scams that started on...

The FTC welcomes comments on its recent HSR Rulemaking initiative, and to facilitate a robust and thoughtful set of public comments, the Commission is holding a series of three live virtual workshops in November to answer the public’s questions before comments are due. On September 21, the Commission announced that it would seek public comments on proposed changes to the rules and interpretations that implement the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. This...

Ohioans know how to handle the virtually impossible. Take Clawde, a rare blue lobster that was destined for a dinner plate this July when a sharp-eyed worker in a Cuyahoga Falls Red Lobster restaurant spotted him, fished him from a holding tank, and started events that landed Clawde in posh new digs at the Akron Zoo — where a veterinarian’s exam led Clawde to be redubbed Clawdia. According to the zoo, blue lobsters occur one in every 2 million...

“UNLIMITED Minutes.” “UNLIMITED TALK.” “‘UNLIMITED MINUTES’ We do not charge ‘per-minute’.” Those are notable claims for anyone shopping for telecom services, including consumers who want to maintain family ties with relatives who are incarcerated. But according to an FTC lawsuit, two companies and two individuals bilked unsuspecting parents, spouses, children, and other loved ones out of more than $1 million by selling them misleading “unlimited...

I am pleased to announce several leadership changes in the Bureau's Mergers I and Mergers IV Divisions. Mark Seidman has been named as the Acting Assistant Director for the Mergers IV Division. Mark has served as Deputy Assistant Director for Mergers IV for the past six years. Prior to becoming Deputy Assistant Director, Mark served as Counsel to the Director under former Bureau Directors Debbie Feinstein and Rich Feinstein. Mark joined the...

With the conclusion of FY2020, we look back on a year unlike any other in the history of the Bureau of Competition. The year has been marked by a combination of exceptional commitment from the Bureau’s staff, enforcement achievements that would be remarkable in any year but which are nothing short of incredible in this one, and a string of enforcement and policy successes. The first measure of our success in any year is our work to protect...