Business Blog 2022 Archive

Weather emergencies don’t take a winter vacation. Scammers don’t either. Just like you, they’re watching the weather reports and preparing for storms – and they’re counting on catching you unawares...

For a substantial segment of the buying public, environmental claims are highly material. That’s why green consumers see red when companies use misleading representations to pitch their products and...

The FTC’s $275 million proposed settlement with Epic Games, owner of Fortnite, alleges the company violated the law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental consent and...

Ask someone to picture the typical person who has experienced a scam and they may think of an older consumer taken in by a fast-talking fraudster. Regardless of the image they create, the results of...

Army brats like me grew up around the word “readiness.” We knew it meant weeks or even months of a parent away on deployment, training for “What if . . .” scenarios. One of the reasons so many...

We’re told the name Nebraska comes from the Otoe term Ñí Brásg, meaning “serene water.” The Platte River flows across the state until it converges with the Missouri. From there, it meets the...

Globe-trotting swindlers may try to evade law enforcement agencies intent on bringing them to justice. But they’re not factoring in the tenacity of public servants like Assistant United States...

Let’s call it The Recliner Interval – the time it takes for an obscure niche product to start running prime time TV commercials. It’s a made-up metric, of course, but a few hours in front of the TV...

Scammers often target job seekers and prospective entrepreneurs with bogus employment and money-making offers. We know that because the FTC has investigated and stopped many of them. But scammers are...

Consumers’ health information is already a particularly sensitive category. But health information and other personal data from kids as young as eight? That can raise privacy concerns to the...

In the old TV show Dragnet, Sergeant Joe Friday was famous for saying “Just the facts, ma’am.” But like “Play it again, Sam” in Casablanca, that quotable quote was never actually said by the lead...

It’s a “tale as old as time.” But unlike Beauty and the Beast, in the online version, the transformation often goes in the opposite direction with the entrancing lover ultimately revealed to be a...

Social media is a gold mine for scammers, and in the latest FTC Data Spotlight, we’re digging deeper into this deceptive trend happening across social media platforms. Why do we repeatedly ask people...