A series of defendants will pay approximately $10 million to the Federal Trade Commission to settle charges that they operated a massive scam that sent unwanted text messages to millions of consumers, many of whom later received illegal robocalls, phony “free” merchandise offers, and unauthorized charges crammed on their mobile phone bills. The settlement marks … Read more
On October 10, 2014, a federal district court judge in the matter of Wagner v. Digital Publ’g Corp. ruled that a triable issue of fact on whether the “from” names, domain names and subject lines of four SPAM e-mails contained material misstatements precluded partial summary judgment on plaintiff’s state law claims. Plaintiff Christopher Wagner sued … Read more
As part of a $105 million settlement with federal and state law enforcement officials, AT&T Mobility LLC will pay $80 million to the Federal Trade Commission to provide refunds to consumers the company unlawfully billed for unauthorized third-party charges, a practice known as mobile “cramming.” The refunds are part of a multi-agency settlement that also … Read more
If you’re thinking about trying to buy Facebook ‘likes’ for your business, you might want to think twice. Facebook has been seriously trying to crack down on these ‘like spammers’ for some time, and according to a recent post made by Facebook’s Site Integrity Engineer, Matt Jones, they have actually successfully sued individuals and companies … Read more
As part of “Operation Full Disclosure,” the Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters to more than 60 companies that allegedly failed to make adequate disclosures in their television and print ads. According to a September 23, 2014 statement from the agency, the effort is the agency’s latest “to ensure that advertisers comply with federal law and … Read more
Yelp is, once again, in some legal trouble. This time it is for collecting personal data from minors under the age of 13. This data was collected in a way that violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The COPPA requires that companies get parental consent if they want to collect personal information, such … Read more
The FTC has recently reached an agreement with Online advertising agency Intermundo Media, LLC (AKA IMM.com aka Delta Prime Refinance) for running deceptive fines attempting to generate mortgage refinancing leads. According to the settlement, the company ran ads that claimed they were able to provide free refinancing. The ads ran on Google, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo … Read more
The Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 and the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act regulate certain actions of debt relief service providers, such as requesting or receiving fees from consumers prior to the service provider successfully renegotiating at least one of the consumer’s debts and the consumer having made at least one … Read more
Anyone who has been online more than a few days has seen advertisements for websites that claim to be able to help you make major profits off of penny stocks. They often ask you to sign up for their email where they will shoot out the ‘hottest penny stock tips’ as they become available. While … Read more
The FTC has recently agreed to settle with John Matthew Dwyer III, the co-founder and former CEO of HealthyLife Sciences, LLC. The settlement specified that he agreed to be banned from the weight-loss industry. This includes manufacturing and marketing any type of weight-loss products in the future. The FTC filed a complaint against the company, … Read more
Applied Food Sciences, Inc. (“AFS”), has settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it used the results of a flawed study to make baseless weight-loss claims about its green coffee extract to retailers, who repeated those claims in marketing finished products to consumers. The FTC complaint alleges the study was hopelessly flawed and that no reliable conclusions … Read more
In a recent case (Levitt v. Yelp) the plaintiff claimed Yelp was manipulating reviews on their site to attempt to gain additional revenue from business owners. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of this case, which was a class action case, because of a lack of evidence. The … Read more
As I’m sure everyone has heard by now, nude and explicit images of over 100 celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, Victoria Justice and Kate Upton were illegally obtained by a hacker, and then released online. Sadly, many peoples reaction to hearing of this blatant crime and invasion of privacy is to pull up Google and start … Read more
Keeping up to date on the latest trends in marketing and compliance is essential for all performance marketers. With that in mind, everyone should take some time to review the latest report from PerformLine titled, “Marketing Compliance Trends.” This report contains a number of key statistics that everyone should be aware of. For example, this … Read more