Business Blog

You want to build data security into your product development pipeline, but what concrete steps should you take to put that into practice? You could sit down over coffee with executives from Fortune 500 companies, innovative start-ups, and leading security firms to download their expertise, but the cost could be substantial in time, access, and caffeine. The FTC has a better idea.

The FTC just posted a new list and you’ll want to make sure you don’t land on it.

It’s a list of hundreds of companies and individuals banned from the debt relief business.

What’s on consumers’ minds is what’s between their ears. A proposed settlement with LearningRx, a Colorado-based franchisor with more than 80 “brain training” centers across the country, and CEO Ken Gibson is the latest in a growing line of FTC cases challenging false and deceptive claims about improved cognition.

Seeing is believing. And last week, the FTC reminded eye doctors – in writing – about their legal responsibilities under the agency’s Eyeglass Rule. The rule requires you to provide a copy of the prescription to the patient at the end of the eye exam, even if the patient doesn’t request it. You  should also not ask patients if they want their prescription. The prescription should be given to them automatically.

In the words of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, “An oral contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.” If your company provides information about consumers to credit bureaus, the law requires that you have written policies in place regarding the accuracy and integrity of that data. But are your policies worth the paper they’re printed on? That’s one of the issues presented in an FTC settlement with Dallas-based debt collector Credit Protection Association.

In Amazon’s Appstore, many apps geared toward kids prompted them to use fictitious currency, like a “boatload of doughnuts” or a “can of stars,” as part of game play. But a federal district court recently agreed with the FTC that Amazon’s practice of charging cold, hard cash for those imaginary items and billing parents and account holders without their express informed consent violates Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Animation fans remember the ballet-dancing pink hippos in Fantasia. In Egyptian mythology, the god of disorder was depicted as a red hippo.

Bears and Bulls. Brats and beer. That toddlin’ town. Lots of three-word phrases evoke Chicago. And on June 15, 2016, add Start with Security to the list. That’s when the FTC’s Start with Security roadshow breezes into the Windy City.

Last week, I had the pleasure of sitting down for some Q&A with members of the Network Advertising Initiative (NAI), one of the leading self-regulatory organizations for the online, interest-based advertising industry. One of the questions they posed was what additional actions industry should be taking to address online tracking as it develops ever more complex technologies. My answer? Tell people how they’re being tracked and offer them easy-to-use tools to block all of the techniques used to track them.