TJX faces scrutiny by FTC
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The Federal Trade Commission said yesterday it is investigating TJX Cos. in connection with a major security breach at the Framingham retailer that potentially exposed millions of customers' credit and debit card data.
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Trend Micro has convinced the trade commission to look into whether competitors are infringing on its patents.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.
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THREE senior officials running one of Americaâs junior stockmarkets could face civil charges relating to its options market, following a probe by US watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Two privacy groups are stepping up the pressure on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying the agency has an obligation to consider privacy concerns as it prepares to rule on the antitrust implications of&#160;Google&#39;s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick.The executive directors of&#160;the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) repeated their call for the FTC to impose privacy conditions if it approves the merger. It appears that an FTC decision on the $3.1 billion acquisition is &quot;imminent,&quot; said Jeffrey Chester, CDD&#39;s executive director.FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz in October suggested the FTC&#39;s review of the deal had to be about competition questions, not privacy, but Chester disagreed during a press conference on Tuesday. One of the FTC&#39;s main duties is to protect consumer privacy, and the merger of the number one search provider with the number one ad server raises serious privacy questions, he said.Google&#39;s contention that there are no major privacy concerns is &quot;absurd on the face of it,&quot; Chester said. DoubleClick says it serves 8 billion online ads and processes 964GB of Web server log files each day, he said.&quot;It would be a violation of trust, in effect abuse of their own role, in not addressing an issue of such concern as the data-collection apparatus within the ever-growing behemoth,&quot; Chester said. &quot;If they&#39;re really the agency to protect consumer privacy, they will act to protect privacy. If they fail to act to protect privacy, they have basically put up a flag to American consumers saying, &#39;We surrender your data.&#39;&quot;Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich repeated Google&#39;s position that the merger would have positive effects.&quot;This acquisition is good for consumers, advertisers and Web site publishers, and we continue to be confident that it will be approved,&quot; he said. &quot;I would also point out what the FTC itself has said about privacy not playing a role in its review of the deal.&quot;Last week, the two groups&#160;asked FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself from the decision on the merger, saying her husband works for a law firm that is advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S.&#160;Majoras declined Monday to recuse herself, saying that her husband isn&#39;t directly involved in the DoubleClick deal and that the Jones Day law firm is advising the company only before European regulators.An FTC spokesman wasn&#39;t immediately available for comment.Chester and EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg repeated their calls for Majoras to recuse herself. Jones Day&#39;s Web site, until recently, said it was advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S. as well as Europe, they said.But the most important step the FTC can take is to impose privacy conditions on the merger, Rotenberg said. The case for a privacy review &quot;is very clear,&quot; he said.Chester agreed. &quot;Are they concerned about Americans&#39; privacy, or are they going to give Google a pass?&quot; he said.
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The breach at TJX Companies occurred almost a full-year earlier than first thought -- and compromised more payment card data than previously believed, the company said.
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Citigroup Inc., the world&#39;s largest bank, said the US Securities and Exchange Commission may take enforcement action against Thomas Jones, who ran the company&#39;s investment-management unit.
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The board, which met this weekend, reportedly expressed concern about regulatory scrutiny.
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Several banks looking to join forces in a class-action lawsuit say that the massive breach of retailer TJX's systems revealed data on some 94 million of its customers' payment cards.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.The settlement with CEO Group, doing business as Check Em Out, bars the company and its operator Scott Joseph from marketing or selling phone records, and it requires the company to give up $25,000 of its profits from selling phone records. Selling phone records to third parties is illegal under federal law, the FTC had charged.The FTC in May 2006 filed complaints in U.S. court against five Web-based companies that obtained and sold confidential phone records to third parties. In addition to the settlement with CEO Group, the FTC has settled two other cases and obtained a default judgment against a fourth company. The complaint against the fifth company is still active.The FTC&#39;s complaints came after complaints from privacy groups and members of the U.S. Congress about pretexting, when someone obtains a telephone customers&#39; records without permission under false pretexts. In many cases, companies offering phone records over the Internet were calling telephone carriers and pretending to be the targeted customer. In September 2006,&#160;Hewlett-Packard revealed it had been spying on some of its board members and journalists in an attempt to uncover the source of boardroom leaks, and HP officials later said their investigators had used pretexting to obtain phone records.The Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits customers&#39; phone records from being disclosed unless &quot;upon affirmative written request by the customer.&quot; The FTC charged the five Web-based companies of engaging in unfair business practices.The settlement with CEO Group prohibits it from obtaining, marketing or selling consumer phone records or other consumer personal information except where allowed by law, the FTC said in a news release. The settlement, approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, includes a judgment of $222,381, the amount the company earned by selling phone records, but the defendants said they were able to pay only $25,000. If the court finds that the defendants misrepresented their finances, the entire amount will be due, the FTC said.
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A U.K. consumer watchdog office is investigating claims of unfair pricing practices.
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In an historic decision that split the FTC almost down the middle, it has issued a complaint against a patent holding company allegedly that apparently sued computer and network manufacturers for having followed the Ethernet standard.
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A class action lawsuit was filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston accusing TJX Cos. of negligence for failing to maintain adequate security of customer credit and debit card data and not disclosing the breach for a month.
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Raising the fine line US consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is calling for a bigger stick with which to punish spyware purveyors.â¦
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European and U.S. regulators said Tuesday they have been investigating a possible cartel involving makers of liquid crystal display monitors.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Legislation that would allow the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses may soon get a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. The full House could vote on Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act as soon as late Friday or Saturday, Representative Joe Barton, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Friday. Barton, a Texas Republican, asked the House leadership to move forward with the bill afterÂ lawmakers ripped into Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) officials ThursdayÂ for allowing the practice during an investigation into board leaks. HP President and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd and former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn both testified Thursday that they did not know the details of how the leak investigation was conducted. The pretexting legislation has been stalled since the House Energy and Commerce Committee unanimously approved it in March. The bill would allow the FTC to seek civil penalties against so-called pretexters, those who masquerade as a customer to gain access to phone records or other personal information. Representatives of five mobile phone service carriers raised no objections to the bill during Friday's hearing. Lawmakers questioned if more businesses than HP have used pretexting or other questionable investigatory methods. "How do we, and how does corporate America, break this ethos that, if someone thinks that illegal or unethical activity ... is acceptable, everybody else in a corporation goes along with it?" said Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat. DeGette will explore ways to add new requirements to the Sarbanes-Oxley financial reporting law, she said. Christopher Bryon, a columnist for the New York Post, told lawmakers Friday that he was a victim of pretexting four years ago, long before the HP investigation came to light. A facial recognition software company hired a pretexter to gain access to his sources after he wrote a column about the company, Bryon said. Pretexting appears to be a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, Bryon said. "This is not something I wanted my family to grow up with ... wondering if your mail is being read, if your phone is tapped, if there's a bug in your bedroom," he said. The FTC has filed five lawsuits against alleged pretexters, but the agency lacks the legal authority to seek civil damages, said Joel Winston, associate director of privacy and identity protection at the FTC. The FTC sought to recover pretexting-related profits in those cases, but additional civil penalties would give the agency an additional tool to use against identity thieves, he said. A second pretexting bill, the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act, has passed the House, but the measure is hung up in the Senate over disagreements over the best approach. The House bill would make pretexting a crime, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Congress is scheduled to adjourn by early next week until after the Nov. 7 general election. Congress may come back into session late in the year to address unfinished business.