Items tagged with FTC
Vizio has agreed to pay a $2.2 million fine after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New Jersey Attorney General busted the company for using its internet-connected Smart TVs to automatically track the viewing habits of 11 million customers on a continual basis. The information gleaned from customers was then...
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Two more robocallers have bitten the dust. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just filed complaints against two robocall organizations that have allegedly helped to make billions of robocalls between March 2009 through May 2016. Many of the calls were to numbers on the “Do Not Call” Registry.
The two main...
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed a lawsuit against D-Link alleging that the company's failure to properly secure its line of wireless routers and webcams left thousands of customers "vulnerable to a range" of cyber attacks, including those that turned customers' PCs into major parts of numerous botnets. It...
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Is this real life or an Orwellian nightmare? You might want to think twice before purchasing a MyFriend Cayla or i-Que Robot. The smart toys have been accused of sending information to the Massachusetts-based company Nuance Communication. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Campaign for a...
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Earlier this week, WhatsApp made the surprising move to begin sharing user information with its parent company, Facebook. WhatsApp's original stated goal was to know “as little about you as possible”, but that mantra seems to have been thrown out the window in an effort to further increases Facebook’s booming mobile...
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When it comes to the often slow pace of security updates being pushed to the mobile devices that are at center of our daily digital lives, both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are looking for some answers. The FCC is taking U.S. wireless carriers (like AT&T, Verizon...
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There have been several high profile security breaches over the last couple of years, and in many instances, cyber thieves were able to extract personal information of their target's customers. Usually this resulted in the company offering a free year of identity theft protection to those affected, though in the...
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The Federal Trade Commission has left its stamp on the crowdfunding scene by taking legal action against Erik Chevalier, the Kickstarter project creator who raised more than $122,000 funds from 1,246 backers to produce a board game called The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. In the end, it was the backers who were doomed, as the project was
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Give RadioShack credit, the iconic electronics chain lasted nearly a century and survived part of the Internet era before ultimately filing for bankruptcy. However, the chain's impressive 94-year run doesn't give it a free pass to treat customer data like an asset, or so that's the stance the Federal Trade Commission...
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The FTC has just laid the smackdown on yet another company that's been found guilty of exploiting mobile users without their knowledge. The FTC found that the company, called Nomi Technologies, even went against its own privacy policy mere months after it promised not to, in late 2012.
Nomi's business model...
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As we’ve shown in the past, the FTC doesn’t take too kindly to “unlimited” data plans that are anything but. Companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless still honor grandfather unlimited data plans, and in the past have throttled customers once they reached a certain threshold (5GB in the case of customers on AT&T’s...
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Dish Network is in hot water with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for outright violating the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), including the "Do Not Call" registry, by placing tens of millions of unsolicited calls to numbers that appear on the list. In all, Dish Network and its retail partners made some...
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AT&T agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to the tune of $105 million in early October for its part in a “cramming” scheme that bilked customers out of millions of dollars. Cramming refers to any unauthorized charges on a customer’s cell phone bill, and typically come in the form of unsolicited...
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Following an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Google has agreed to refund at minimum $19 million to Android users for unauthorized in-app purchases. The search giant has already begun sending out emails to potentially affected individuals, which includes people who have made at least one...
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is bringing the legal hammer down on tech support scammers who trick people into thinking there's something wrong with their computer that they're able to fix, or otherwise offering to speed up your PC. What they're really doing is charging for services that aren't necessary, though...
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We've covered the battles between ISPs and various large-scale content providers multiple times before. From deliberately throttling Netflix users to older spats that prevented Time Warner customers from watching cable channels they'd legally paid for, these kinds of disagreements are common in America these days. A...
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Today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed suit against AT&T stating that the wireless carrier misled and deceived millions of its customers through data throttling for those with its unlimited data plan. On top of that, customers who cancelled their accounts because of throttling we then charged early termination...
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From the beginning, the anti-net neutrality argument has been built on a single premise: Give companies free rein to charge more money for services, and they'll respond by improving the customer experience, rolling out service to more people, and aggressively adopting faster technology. Over the past few months...
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Every parent fears it: In addition to the physical danger to your expensive tablet or smartphone when you hand it over to your child to play with, you’re always worried that they’ll go on an unauthorized in-app spending spree and get you slapped with a monstrous bill. Apple got body slammed by the FTC over...
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Amazon is willing to go to court if the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decides to sue the e-commerce giant for refusing to pay a penalty over mobile in-app purchases made by children on smartphone applications. The FTC wants Amazon to enter into a settlement similar to the one it reached with Apple earlier this year...
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is accusing T-Mobile, otherwise known as the "Un-carrier" (a name T-Mobile gave itself), of being un-cool by charging its wireless subscribers hundreds of millions of dollars for third-party services they never signed up for. These services include things like ringtones...
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Lumped on top of the many engineering challenges that Tesla has had to solve while bringing all-electric vehicles to market is a problem with its sales model. Tesla wants to sell its cars directly to consumers, which seems like a sensible, simple thing to do, but there are laws and regulations all over the country...
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