NPR's Morning Edition this morning covered this pending case, in which borrowers assert a variety of unlawful practices. The New York State Department of Financial Services is also investigating. For instance, one couple says that Ocwen charged fees for "property preservation" even though the couple lived in the home, force-placed insurance even though the couple […]
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… is the goal of this Public Citizen report, worth a read. This excerpt from the introduction gives a flavor: As Google has continued to flourish, it has become ever bolder and more sophisticated in its methods to collect and combine information about individuals to generate revenue. Most Google users are likely aware that Google […]
by Paul Alan Levy Late last week I attended a conference on Social Media Liability at Suffolk University Law School. My own talk, about practical considerations in litigating online free speech issues, is not yet in publishable form, but a fascinating empirical study of the terms of use of several hundred "social networking sites" was […]
A new study has found that more than half of calls to U.S. poison control centers about energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster are for children younger than 6, some suffering seizures and heart problems. Bloomberg has the story. "The study bolsters the idea that energy drinks aren’t safe for children and should carry […]
A settlement obtained by the Federal Trade Commission and the Office of the Florida Attorney General permanently shuts down an Orlando-based operation that bilked seniors by using pre-recorded robocalls to sell them supposedly free medical alert systems. The FTC's press release is here. The Stipulated Order and Permanent Injunction is here.
That's the topic of Consumer Financing Pre-Dispute Mandatory Arbitration: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Developments by law professor Louis Del Duca. Here is the abstract: Judicial precedent with regards to mandatory pre-dispute arbitration agreements has given such clauses substantial protection, resulting in their widespread inclusion in boilerplate contract language. However, recent findings and assertions from […]
Please read this Deal Book article by Jessica Silver-Greenberg. Here's a bit of it: In the netherworld of consumer debt, there are zombies: bills that cannot be killed even by declaring personal bankruptcy. Tens of thousands of Americans who went through bankruptcy are still haunted by debts long after — sometimes as long as a […]
Wading into the the net neutrality debate this week, President Obama came out strongly for it, urging the FCC to reject its proposed "fast lane" approach to regulating the internet (which we've previously discussed here) and to ensure equal access. Yesterday, the National Law Journal looked back and found support for the President's position in […]
Check out PrivacyGrade.org, which analyzed over 1 million applications and ranked them based on how the extent of an application's collection of information about the user matched up with the user's expectations. A key finding from the site, reports CNN Money, is that some of the worst apps in terms of privacy are apps aimed […]
The Federal Communications Commission has in recent years received several petitions concerning the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Responding to some of them, the FCC last week issued an order confirming that all faxed advertisements must include an opt-out notice. The FCC's notice explains: The FCC’s rules require that a “facsimile advertisement that is sent to […]