Correcting your COPPA calendar
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 21, 2011 12:07PM
This Thanksgiving, enjoy an extra slice of pie, take a longer nap, and watch the parades and games for a few more hours because that COPPA comment that was due on November 28th now has to be filed by December 23rd.
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 17, 2011 7:47AM
“Shirley, Shirley, Bo Birley, Banana Fana Fo Firley.” When Shirley Ellis sang the song back in the 60s, it was called “The Name Game.” But when people buy products containing fur, the name is no game.
New privacy system for movement of consumer data between US & Asia-Pacific economies
By: Markus Heyder | Nov 16, 2011 12:34PM
If your company does business in the Asia-Pacific region — or if you work with clients from that part of the global economy — you’ll want to follow recent developments in the privacy arena. This week, the FTC welcomed the approval by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) of a new initiative to harmonize cross-border data privacy protection among members of APEC.
Court holds defendants in contempt
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 14, 2011 6:05PM
When a federal court tells a business to stop a certain course of conduct, here’s a handy tip for those who want to avoid even more serious legal trouble: Stop already.
Is it insurance? Putting a premium on truth
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 13, 2011 3:38PM
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.
Continue Reading Is it insurance? Putting a premium on truth
What businesses can do to support the troops on Veterans Day
By: Carol Kando-Pineda | Nov 11, 2011 9:05AM
You might do business with members of the military community — or they could be your employees, neighbors, family and friends. On this Veterans Day, you may be considering a donation to a charity that assists veterans, active-duty personnel, or military families. But not all “charities” are legitimate: Some are sham operators whose only purpose is to make money for themselves. Others use paid fundraisers whose fees eat up most of a donation, so very little of it is shared with those in need.
Continue Reading What businesses can do to support the troops on Veterans Day
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 9, 2011 10:49AM
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.
By: Kandi Parsons and Jamie Hine | Nov 8, 2011 1:44PM
Businesses have wised up that their customers are concerned about privacy. That’s why privacy promises, like any other claim you convey, have to be truthful. So when you describe how you use — and don’t use — people’s information, be sure to give them the straight story, avoiding steps that would undermine their privacy choices. That’s the nuts-and-bolts conclusion companies should draw from the FTC’s settlement with ScanScout, the first agency action addressing Flash cookies.
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 4, 2011 2:10PM
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.
By: Lesley Fair | Nov 1, 2011 3:05PM
The FTC’s 100th birthday is looming (and it doesn’t look a day over 85, if we do say so ourselves). Ever wonder what the FTC’s very first published law enforcement action — 1 F.T.C. 1 — involved? It dealt with a company that sold thread deceptively labeled as “cilk.” Fast forward a century and people still want to know for certain that the cotton shirt they’re buying is made of cotton.
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 31, 2011 9:08AM
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.
By: Alvaro Puig | Oct 28, 2011 8:44AM
If you use the BCP Business Center, you know it’s a great source of practical compliance tips on advertising, telemarketing, online privacy, data security, and other topics. If you’re reading our blog, you know it’s a quick — and original — take on the latest developments in BCP enforcement, policy development, research, and education.
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 26, 2011 1:53PM
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
Auto-biography: The next chapter
By: Jim Chen | Oct 25, 2011 9:40AM
The FTC’s motor vehicle roundtables are rolling along. The next stop for The Road Ahead: Selling, Financing and Leasing Motor Vehicles is Washington, D.C., on November 17th. The Roundtable — which will take place in the FTC’s New Jersey Avenue Conference Center, 601 New Jersey Avenue, N.W. — will focus on leasing, a look back at what the FTC has learned throughout the course of the roundtables, and where the FTC should go from here.
By: David Vladeck, Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection | Oct 21, 2011 9:23AM
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.
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 19, 2011 12:26PM
Between the picture of the President and Vice-President standing in front of the American flag and the references to government funds to stabilize the economy, it’s understandable that people who signed up for the service advertised on the Grant Connect website thought they were on their way to landing a grant. Promoters even described Grant Connect as “a unique, consumer-friendly US government grant program that delivers all of the tools for the consumer to search multiple databases, write grant proposals, and deliver polished plans. . .”
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 17, 2011 5:46PM
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.
Kids, Food Marketing & Self-Regulation: The Latest
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 13, 2011 11:14AM
Following what’s going on with the Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children? Then you’ll want to read the FTC’s testimony yesterday at a joint hearing held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health and Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade.
Continue Reading Kids, Food Marketing & Self-Regulation: The Latest
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 11, 2011 5:08PM
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?
By: Lesley Fair | Oct 11, 2011 1:31PM
Like Maria in The Sound of Music, brown paper packages tied up with strings are a few of our favorite things. So it's no surprise that catalog and online shopping has become a time saving essential for millions of Americans.
