Consumer Organization Will Announce Online Database Complaint File Concerning Pulte Homes, DiVosta Homes, Del Webb Homes, Says Executive Director Andy Martin
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CHICAGO, Dec. 8  /PRNewswire/ -- FightPulte.com, FightDiVosta.com and FightDelWebb.com will hold a Chicago news conference Monday, December 11th to announce a new online database complaint file directed at one of the nation's largest home building firms, Pulte Homes, DiVosta Homes and Del Webb.
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Pressure mounted on TJX Cos. yesterday after an Alabama bank filed a class action lawsuit against the Framingham discounter for negligence and breach of contract as Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how the company lost control of potentially millions of customers' credit- and debit-card data.
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Blog: A blog post at Consumerist.com offering tips on buying from Dell draws a nasty cease-and-desist letter from the company's attorney--and then a chastened apology from a Dell manager.
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The man who says he is the founder of ISoldMyHouse.com filed a lawsuit this week against John F. Gallagher, the recently fired chief executive of 1-800-East-West Mortgage Co., for selling ISoldMyHouse.com without his knowledge.
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At CES, chief Kevin Martin says agency plans to determine whether Comcast's reported interference with file-sharing traffic is "reasonable network management."
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Industry group will offer a free program to help users find and eliminate illegal files. The Motion Picture Association of America this week announced that it has begun filing lawsuits against people who use
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A troubled company in the troubled housing sector.
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The Democratic Party has filed a formal complaint over a large broadcast chain's plans to air a documentary highly critical of presidential nominee John Kerry just before the election, party officials said.
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At Consumer Electronics Show, chief Kevin Martin says agency plans to determine whether Comcast's reported interference with filesharing traffic is "reasonable network management."
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The mortgage company is the target of a formal inquiry by the S.E.C. over its accounting practices, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
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Bankrupt specialty chemicals firm says it is likely to be indicted for violating environmental laws. NEW YORK  - WR Grace &amp; Co.
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By The Miami Herald  Feb. 18--Despite challenges facing the Miami-Dade County Housing Agency, a federal takeover, or making the agency an independent entity, would be premature. Takeover talk is coming from Orlando Cabrera, assistant secretary of public housing for the U.S.
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Fannie Mae Chief Executive Franklin Raines will tell a US House panel the largest government- sponsored mortgage finance company ``strongly&#39;&#39; disagrees with a report by its regulator
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against digital music service BurnLounge Inc., accusing the company of operating an illegal pyramid scheme, the FTC announced Tuesday. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California June 6, asks the court to permanently shut down the alleged illegal pyramid practices, the FTC said in a press release. BurnLounge recruited customers through the Internet, telephone calls and in-person meetings, the FTC said. In its sales pitch, BurnLounge told customers they were likely to make substantial income if they would buy one of its product packages, ranging from US $29.95 to $429.95 per year. The more expensive packages purportedly provided participants with an increased ability to earn rewards through the BurnLounge compensation program. BurnLounge, based in New York, called its business model "unique and revolutionary," in a press release in response to the FTC court filing. "BurnLounge will continue to afford its customers the opportunity to enjoy sharing their tastes in music and films, while providing an avenue for them to express their entrepreneurial talents," Sheldon Sloan, attorney for BurnLounge, said in a statement. So far, the court has refused to grant a temporary restraining order, Sloan added in his statement. The denial is "a significant victory, and furthers the company's belief that it has conducted its business lawfully," he added. BurnLounge, which launched its service in mid-2006, calls itself the "world's first fan-driven download community." Customers open their own digital music stores and sell music and movies they recommend to friends. But the FTC alleges that the BurnLounge compensation program primarily provided payments to participants for recruiting of new participants, not on the retail sale of products. Retail sales would result in a substantial percentage of participants losing money, the FTC said. The FTC accuses BurnLounge and its owners of operating an illegal pyramid scheme, making deceptive earnings claims, and failing to disclose that most consumers who invest in pyramid schemes don't receive substantial income, but lose money, instead. The FTC has asked the court to halt the alleged deceptive practices and misrepresentations and to freeze the defendants' assets, pending a trial. At a June 8 hearing on the FTC's request for a temporary restraining order, BurnLounge's attorneys asked for more time to respond fully, and U. S. District Court Judge George Wu ordered that a full hearing on the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction and asset freeze be held on June 19.
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Sears Holdings is facing a class-action lawsuit after&#160;making the purchase history of its customers public&#160;on its Managemyhome.com Web site.The lawsuit seeks damages as well as an accounting by Sears to determine whether the Web site was misused by criminals. It was filed on Friday by New Jersey resident Christine Desantis, who is represented by KamberEdelson, a technology law firm. KamberEdelson is best known for its recent settlement with social networking site Facebook over its sending of unwanted text messages to recycled cell-phone numbers.&quot;It&#39;s a pretty simple case,&quot; said Jay Edelson, a partner with the Chicago-based law firm. &quot;Sears decided to put private information of its customers up on the Web site and make it publicly available. They did it without telling their customers that it was going to happen ... and they really did it for their own financial reasons.&quot;Manage My Home is a community portal where Sears shoppers can download product manuals, find product tips and get home renovation ideas. The Web site had a feature called &quot;Find your products&quot; that ostensibly was designed to help users look up past purchases.Last Thursday, researchers at security vendor CA pointed out that the feature could be used to look up the purchase history of any Sears customer, an apparent violation of the company&#39;s privacy policy.Manage My Home could easily have been misused by criminals, Edelson said. For example, a robber could gain access to a victim&#39;s home by posing as a Sears repair person, using the information available on the site. That could be incredibly scary, he said. &quot;They have a duty to keep that information away from the public.&quot;Sears disabled the &quot;Find your products&quot; feature&#160;on Friday, saying it would re-introduce the feature once the company figures out a way of ensuring that the information cannot be viewed by unauthorized third parties.However, the retailer was informed of the problem weeks before it took the feature off-line, Edelson said.In late December, CA researchers also criticized Sears for&#160;downloading invasive comScore Web tracking software&#160;onto the desktops of some members of its MySHCcommunity.com Web site without adequate disclosure.KamberEdelson is also investigating that matter, Edelson said.&#160;
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The Web site of a law firm employing the husband of U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras contradicts an FTC explanation that Majoras has no conflict of interest in reviewing DoubleClick&#39;s $3.1 billion acquisition by Google, two privacy groups said Thursday.On Wednesday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD)&#160;asked Majoras to recuse herself from the merger review, saying her husband, John Majoras, is a partner with Jones Day, the law firm that is advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues relating to the acquisition.DoubleClick and the FTC have denied that Jones Day has represented the company before the FTC.But on Thursday, EPIC and CDD filed a second complaint with the FTC, showing a cached Web page claiming that Jones Day is advising DoubleClick &quot;on the international and U.S. antitrust and competition law aspects of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition by Google Inc.&quot; The Jones Day Web page was later changed, the groups said.EPIC and CDD said Thursday they were filing a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all records on the relationship between Jones Day and DoubleClick.One conclusion to draw is that &quot;Jones Day has sought to conceal the nature, scope, and duration of the relationship with its client DoubleClick by altering web pages,&quot; said a letter signed by executive directors of both organizations. FTC spokespeople who denied the relationship were &quot;either misinformed or willfully misled the public,&quot; the letter says.An FTC spokeswoman declined to comment on the new complaint. Representatives of Jones Day and DoubleClick weren&#39;t immediately available for comment.The FTC and DoubleClick downplayed the connection Wednesday, saying Jones Day has not advised DoubleClick on matters before the FTC. Instead, Simpson Thacher &amp; Bartlett has been DoubleClick&#39;s outside counsel since July of 2005 and has advised it in matters before the FTC, DoubleClick said in a statement.&quot;Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the commission on DoubleClick&#8217;s behalf,&quot; the company said.In April, EPIC, CDD, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG)&#160;asked the FTC to block Google&#39;s acquisition of DoubleClick&#160;unless the combined company made changes to its privacy practices. The combined company would hold a vast amount of private information on Web users, the groups said.
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The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the industry's largest trade group, plans to unveil on Tuesday a proposal to increase U.S. federal oversight of imported food and ingredients, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday.