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...

Gift cards may be at the top of your holiday gift giving list. But there’s another list that gift cards top , and it’s decidedly less festive. According to the FTC’s latest Consumer Protection Data...

As the holidays – and the end of the tax year – draw near, people are likely to approach small business owners with requests for charitable contributions. But scammers are hard at work with their own...

If recent headlines about ransomware attacks on companies have you worried, your concerns are well-founded. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure...

The FTC has been warning consumers for years about impersonation scams – calls that falsely claim to come from the IRS, the Social Security Administration, or other offices or businesses. The messages...

If your company is facing the fall-out from Hurricane Ida, flooding in Tennessee, western wildfires, or any other natural disaster, your employees are looking for help in the recovery process – and...

Have you or one of your employees received an alarming text message about unemployment insurance benefits from what seems to be your state workforce agency? You’re not alone. Identity thieves are...

We’ll leave it to the economists to crunch the employment numbers. We’re just happy to see more Help Wanted signs in the windows of Main Street retailers. That’s good news for Americans affected by...

It’s exciting to see so many “open” signs appearing in store windows across the country. But some companies making the transition to an in-person workplace may find themselves in a short-term cash...

You have to say this about scammers: They’re up on current events. As early as February 2020, con artists were already using the coronavirus as a hook for swindles and scams and the FTC was sounding...