Business Blog

With the help of innovative businesses, consumers are taking a more active role in managing their health information. How? Maybe it’s an app that monitors their exercise habits, a device that lets diabetics track glucose levels, or a site where patients with the same condition share information. In addition, people are starting to download their information into personal health records, partially because of regulatory initiatives promoting secure online access to medical data.

Is your business breaking into the latest mobile device tracking technologies? If so, remember that the FTC Act still applies. Your business’ basic legal obligation to keep its promises is just as important when using emerging technologies as it is in other contexts.

• $642.4 million in redress and disgorgement ordered in consumer protection cases.
• 2,582,851 complaints received from consumers.
• 192 orders obtained.

Those are just a few of the crunchable numbers in the FTC’s 2014 Annual Highlights.

If you’re active in affiliate marketing, a summary judgment ruling by a United States District Court offers additional support for the conclusion that “Who, me?” isn’t likely to be a persuasive defense to allegations of deception. As a result of the holding, affiliate marketing network LeadClick Media and its parent company, CoreLogic, have to turn over a total of $11.9 million in ill-gotten gains.

Does your company participate in the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework? It’s a voluntary international privacy program administered by the Department of Commerce that lets companies transfer data from the EU to the U.S. in compliance with EU law. Of course, data security and privacy are everyday obligations for companies, but are you honoring one particular once-a-year provision? And what about promises you make regarding how you resolve consumer disputes?

If you handle personnel matters for your company, Background Checks: What Employers Need to Know should be on your desk. The joint FTC-EEOC publication offers dos and don’ts for businesses when looking into the background of prospective employees or current staff up for promotion, retention, transfer, etc. But if it’s time for a compliance double-check, the FTC just issued a new brochure that could serve as a cross-reference.

What do mystery writers, magicians, and some small business scammers have in common? The art of misdirection. But when it comes to small business scammers, we’re on to their tricks. Today the FTC announced that, at its request, a federal court stopped yellow page scammers that were targeting businesses all over the U.S. with a series of ploys. According to the FTC, this is how it worked.

Every company takes a different approach to how it collects, maintains, and shares consumers’ personal information. Companies that want to do right by their customers are careful to explain how they handle that data. That way, consumers will know how their data will be treated.

But what happens when a company changes owners or merges with another entity? Do the representations the company made to consumers before a merger about how their information will be used apply after the merger? Are there limits on how it can be used and shared?

Parents and educators have been thinking a lot lately about the interplay between schools and the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule. So we’ve revised our COPPA FAQs to address the questions you’re asking.