I am working on an article about the CFPB’s determination that discrimination is unfair, a claim that the Chamber of Commerce and banking trade groups are challenging in litigation. Consequently, I am collecting examples in which people used the word “fair” to mean “without discrimination,” or conversely, “unfair” to convey discriminatory conduct. A prominent example […]
Category Archives: Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon.com today for allegedly enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without their consent and knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions. The complaint charges that Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions. The […]
The Federal Trade Commission reported this week on the refunds returned to harmed consumers in 2022 from its cases against bad actors that cheated, deceived, defrauded people out of their money. The agency’s press release also contained a sober message: refunds to consumers are dropping due to AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, a 2021 […]
The FTC has announced the filing and resolution of an action against Amazon, arising out of claims that the company wrongfully retained voice recordings and geolocation information of Alexa users, allowed Amazon employees to access voice information, failed to delete children’s information at the request of parents, and retained children’s personal information longer than necessary. […]
The phrase “dark patterns” was invented by Harry Brignull and has been defined by the FTC as ““practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm.” Examples include web sites that makes it easy to purchase an ongoing service but that make it harder […]
In an amicus brief filed this week, the Federal Trade Commission once again stood up for children’s privacy protections under state law that are consistent with federal law and its regulations. The case, Jones v. Google, involved a group of children who, through their guardians ad litem, sued online video platform YouTube and its owner […]
Myriam E. Gilles of Cardozo has written The Private Attorney General in a Time of Hyper-Polarized Politics, 65 Ariz. L. Rev. 337 (2023). Here’s the abstract: With the enactment of the Federal Trade Commission Act (“FTC Act”) in 1914 and the Wheeler–Lea Act in 1938, Congress sought to establish a brawny federal consumer protection regime to […]
I came across this Federal Trade Commission s interactive dashboard for refund data, which gives a state-by-state breakdown of refunds in FTC cases. Clicking on the “refunds by date” tab shows that 1.9 million people cashed refunds totaling more than $392 million in 2022.
The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments totaling more than $557,000 to consumers who paid money to GDP Network, LLC (YF Solution), a Florida-based telemarketing company that promised credit card interest rate reductions and regularly failed to deliver. The FTC and the State of Florida sued GDP Network and its owners in July 2020, alleging […]
The Federal Trade Commission has stopped a pair of student loan debt relief schemes that it says bilked students out of approximately $12 million by using deceptive claims about repayment programs and loan forgiveness that did not exist. The agency also says the companies falsely claimed to be or be affiliated with the Department of […]