Business Blog

The FTC told companies last fall about impending prohibitions under the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) on certain payment methods that legitimate telemarketing businesses don’t use, but con artists have been known to exploit: remotely-created checks, remotely-created payment orders, cash-to-cash transfers, and cash reload mechanisms.

Spoiler alert: If the villains in a thriller appear to be vanquished with 20 minutes left in the movie, you can bet they’ll make a dramatic reappearance. A case filed by the FTC targets a B2B tactic that small businesses started seeing years ago, but – to quote Poltergeist II – “They’re ba-ack.” And the defendants in the sequel have added what the FTC says is a bogus imposter angle.

For swimmers struggling to stay afloat, imagine this good news/bad news scenario. The good news: Someone throws a life preserver in your direction. The bad news: It’s made of concrete. According to an FTC lawsuit, that’s a rough analogy to the services that Damian Kutzner, Brookstone Law, Advantis Law, attorney Vito Torchia, Jr., and others offered to consumers caught in the undertow of foreclosure.

Appearing as Inspector Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood added a famous phrase to the lexicon. As a suspect pondered his next move, Callahan invited him to consider the consequences of his actions: “You’ve got to ask yourself this question: Do I feel lucky?

Combine two of the most talked-about consumer protection topics – health privacy and consumer-generated online content – and what do you get? A proposed FTC settlement with Practice Fusion, the largest cloud-based electronic health records company in the country, and six compliance tips for others in the industry.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The Italian Job. The Lords of the Rings. The quest for gold is a common theme in action films. But for many consumers who sent money to Encino, California-based Discount Gold Brokers, a lawsuit filed by the FTC alleges that the adventure has turned into a horror movie.

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.