Business Blog

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who’s self-employed, healthcare costs remain a concern.  So a phone call pitching what sounds like comprehensive health insurance coverage might attract your interest.  Except that according to the FTC and the Tennessee Attorney General, what United States Benefits LLC was selling wasn’t really health insurance.

It billed itself as “Facebook and Myspace for kids,” but according to a settlement with the FTC, the Skid-e-Kids website failed to meet critical compliance obligations under COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.  As a result, the FTC says the site collected personal information from about 5,600 kids without their parents’ consent.

Most marketers follow FTC happenings to get the latest on legal compliance. But while you’re visiting the Business Center, check out what BCP is doing to protect small businesses in their role as consumers. Getting the inside scoop on how B2B scams work will help you shield your company from fraudsters in the future.

In celebration of Halloween — and with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe — here’s our take on what companies can do to make sure spooky business practices don’t come back to haunt them.




Once upon a midnight lawful
Pondering practices, good and awful,
Reading through the U.S. Code
For dos and don’ts I parse and claw.

I came upon the Trade Commission’s
Section 5 with all revisions.

Usually it’s the process server who uses a disguise — pretending to be a delivery man or repair person to catch someone off guard. But in a

Next time you’re at the grocery store and flip around a package to check out the ingredients or calorie count, take the opportunity to remember the contribution of Virginia Knauer, who served Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan in high-level consumer affairs positions.

Ms. Knauer held some pretty daring opinions in her day.  At a time when sellers of dog food — but not people food — had to disclose what was inside the package, she advocated for detailed product labeling.

It’s unusual for an FTC court document to come with a warning label, but the allegations contained in a recent debt collection case against an outfit doing business as Rumson, Bolling & Associates aren’t for the faint of heart.  According to the FTC, the defendants harassed debtors with abusive and profane language, including threats to harm their family members, kill their pets, and desecrate the bodies of their deceased loved ones.  And that’s just for starters.

When people get the latest software, app, or gizmo, it comes with default settings configured by the company responsible for the product. The FTC’s settlement with Frostwire, a developer of free peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software, raises interesting issues for industry. When can a company’s choice of default settings amount to an unfair practice under Section 5 of the FTC Act? And when can a company’s representations about default settings be considered deceptive?

When a retailer closes its doors, what’s the effect on privacy promises the company made to its customers?  The business community and bankruptcy bar have been watching with interest what’s going on in the bankruptcy of former book and video seller Borders.  Are you up on the latest developments?