Experts Available to Discuss FTC Fines Social Networking Site for Violating COPPA
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ExpertSource:     TOPIC: The Federal Trade Commission fined Xanga.com, a social networking Web site, $1 million for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), according to an article by MSNBC.
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Social network sites are being urged to do more to help young users report online abuse.
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In the wake of a Wired News investigation, the social networking site
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(InfoWorld) - An Internet business that sold people's telephone and credit-card records has agreed to settle charges that it violated U.S. law, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Thursday. Integrity Security & Investigation Services and its owner, Edmund Edmister, will give up $2,700, the entire amount the company earned from selling phone records and credit card transaction reports, the FTC said. The settlement also bars the company from obtaining and selling confidential phone and credit account records unless authorized by law or court order. The FTC in MayÂ filed federal court complaintsÂ against five Web-based operations allegedly engaged in pretexting, attempting to obtain phone or other personal records from companies by pretending to be the targeted customer. Integrity Security & Investigation Services is the first firm to settle with the FTC; charges are still pending against the four remaining companies. The U.S. Congress has beenÂ investigating pretextingÂ since early this year, but the practice gained national attention last month whenÂ Hewlett-Packard officials revealedÂ pretexting had been used to gain access to the phone records of employees, board members and journalists. Private investigators employed by HP allegedly used pretexting in an investigation of board leaks in 2005 and 2006. The agency dismissed charges against F. Lynne Moseley and Tracey Edmister, Integrity Security & Investigation Services corporate officers. The FTC determined they played no role in operating the business.
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(InfoWorld) - An Internet-based provider of sexually explicit entertainment has agreed to pay a $465,000 civil penalty for sending unwanted e-mail, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The settlement with TJ Web Productions is the fifth after the FTC announced a crackdown on sexually explicit e-mail spam in July 2005, when the agency charged seven companies with violating a U.S. law requiring warning labels on sexually explicit e-mail. Sexually explicit e-mails sent by TJ Web affiliates have been "widely distributed" since May 2004, according to an FTC complaint. Including the TJ Web settlement, the FTC has collected more than $1.6 million in civil penalties from the five companies, the FTC said. The FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule and the CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress in late 2003, require commercial e-mailers of sexually explicit material to use the phrase, "sexually explicit," in the subject line, and to ensure that the initially viewable area of the message does not contain graphic sexual images. The rule and the law also require that unsolicited commercial e-mail give recipients a way to opt out of receiving future e-mail and provide a postal address. Under the proposed settlement, TJ Web is permanently prohibited from violating the FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule. The company also is permanently prohibited from violating the CAN-SPAM Act by initiating commercial e-mail without clearly and conspicuously displaying a physical postal address and also without including an opt-out mechanism. TJ Web, based in Henderson, Nevada, did not send e-mail directly to consumers, but it operated an affiliate marketing program and paid others to send e-mail on its behalf, the FTC said. TJ Web operates "dozens" of adult Web sites containing sexually explicit photographs and videos, according to the FTC complaint. The proposed settlement, which requires court approval, also forces TJ Web to obtain agreement from affiliates that they will comply with the terms of the court order. Although TJ Web has a Web site, there is no contact information listed, nor does the company have a published telephone number, so no one there could be reached for comment.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)Â needs to step up its regulation of the telecommunications and broadband industries and reverse its current opposition to net neutrality rules, two consumer groups said Wednesday. Representatives of the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America criticized the FTC for a lack of focus on telecom and broadband issues while testifying before the U.S. Senate's Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism Subcommittee. The FTC has "failed consumers badly" by insisting there is strong competition in the broadband space and therefore not in need of regulation, said Mark Cooper, director of the Consumer Federation of America. The U.S. has fallen from the world leader in Internet service a decade ago to lagging behind several countries in speed and price, he said. "The cozy [broadband] duopoly in America dribbles out bandwidth at 10 to 20 times what other people pay in the world," Cooper said. "Consumers pay too much for too little in this country." Cooper and Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat and subcommittee chairman, both complained aboutÂ an FTC report in June that questioned the need for net neutrality rulesÂ that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Dorgan noted that telecom providers had Internet content nondiscrimination rules in place until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Supreme Court removed them in 2005. Without such rules, large broadband providers could block innovative new companies from reaching customers if they require e-commerce vendors to pay extra fees, he said. "We won't know what we miss, we won't know what we squelch," said Dorgan, who has sponsored a net neutrality bill. "What we built, we built with nondiscrimination regulations." But Deborah Platt Majoras, the FTC's chairwoman, said the Internet is changing so fast that new regulations would have unintended consequences andÂ could stop broadband providers from prioritizing traffic that consumers demand be faster, such as video downloads. The FTC sees little evidence of Web content discrimination occurring, she said. "No way is Verizon or any of these other companies powerful enough to disrupt the amount of consumer-generated content that's out there," Majoras said. "If they suddenly put a stop to that, there will be a hue and cry across this nation like no tomorrow, and they will lose a lot of customers." Majoras called on Congress to wait with net-neutrality regulations until there's a problem with blocked content. Dorgan disagreed. "I think both the lack of informed public policy and the lack of effective competition means we have one-twentieth the speed at twice the price of Internet service that many of our foreign competitors have," he said. "My hope is that you'll agree with me that rather than wait for bad things to happen, we might want to preserve the same nondiscrimination rules that we've always had." In addition to the net-neutrality debate, Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union, called on the FTC to keep a close eye on advertising for bundled telecom services, such as voice, data, and television service together. In some cases, advertising for bundled services has not reflected the real prices, Murray said. In addition, broadband providers have cut off customers for using too much bandwidth without defining a limit on bandwidth. "If that's not an unfair and deceptive practice, I don't know what is," Murray said.
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A one-day summit, co-hosted by Visa and the Harvard Business School and drawing players from all corners of the electronic payments industry, hopes to tackle controversial topics such as data theft and disclosure laws. Can participants at the "Maintaining Trust in Payments Summit" avoid the blame game?
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WASHINGTON -- The US Federal Trade Commission is seeking the first fines for breaches of a rule banning calls to people whose numbers are on a &quot;do-not-call&quot; registry, saying a Las Vegas telemarketer made more than 300,000 unwelcome pitches.
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Social network will allow individual creators to put a price on their content.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked a federal court to require an alleged Web page hijacking operation to obey previous orders barring unfair and deceptive practices.
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Rick Cotton, of NBC Universal, says they need to in order to protect creators. Law professor Tim Wu says it is like helping farmers hurt by cheap imports by regulating airplanes.
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(InfoWorld) - eBay's security experts have determined that it's highly likely that whoever posted confidential information about its members in a company discussion forum this week stole the data via an e-mail phishing scam, an eBay spokeswoman said Thursday. The perpetrator of theÂ data disclosure on about 1,200 eBay membersÂ didn't hack into eBay systems, spokeswoman Nichola Sharpe said in an e-mail interview, reiterating an assurance eBay made when the incident happened on Tuesday. eBay is working with law enforcement to take action against the fraudster, she said, while declining to answer whether the person has been identified or caught. Because the situation is delicate, eBay can't fully disclose the information it has gathered, she said. Sharpe also defended eBay's reaction to the incident, in which a malicious user posted members' information like names, addresses, user IDs and, apparently, credit card numbers on the company's Trust & Safety discussion forum. In a discussion forum thread, some eBay members have criticized the vendor for, in their view, taking too long in shutting down the forum used by the fraudster. eBay took the Trust & Safety forum offline about an hour after the fraudster began posting the confidential data. Regarding the credit card numbers, eBay now knows they didn't belong to the affected members and is fairly certain that the numbers weren't valid at all. "We have reason to believe this data was falsified to cause public concern," Sharpe said. eBay hasn't been able to determine when the phishing scam may have taken place, she said, while declining to comment on whether the data theft may involve more than the 1,200 members whose information was listed. Sharpe declined to answer whether eBay can or plans to implement changes to its discussion forums so that potentially malicious postings or suspicious activities can be automatically flagged and alerts triggered. She also declined to comment on whether eBay has any theories on why the fraudster would choose to disclose the stolen data in such a public and brazen manner. As part of its investigation, eBay has contacted the affected users by telephone. In an official blog posting Wednesday night about this incident, an eBay staffer urged eBay users to be mindful about phishing scams and how to avoid falling victim to them. Sharpe said eBay shuts down over two-thirds of phishing spoof sites in under 24 hours. "There is no silver bullet to stop spoofing and phishing -- these are Internet problems, which is why eBay collaborates with numerous third parties, such as universities, industry leaders, and law enforcement to ensure eBay is a safe, transparent place to shop," she said. eBay members should always check their "My Messages" queue to verify any e-mail from eBay concerning their account. "If an e-mail affects your eBay account, it's in My Messages. If you get an e-mail that looks like it's from eBay about a problem with your account or requests personal information and it's not in My Messages, it's a fake e-mail," she said. Suspicious e-mails should be reported to these mailboxes: spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com. "Never click on a link or reply to e-mails that ask for personal information. eBay and PayPal will never ask you for your account or credit card details, username, or password in any communications," she said. It's also advisable for members to change their passwords frequently. More information about safety measures on eBay can be found on this Web site.
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La Federal Trade Commission Usa indagherÃ  su eventuali lesioni della concorrenza:con l'acquisizione una quantitÃ  abnorme di dati personali degli utenti                                            Google, la FTC apre un'indagine antitrust sull'accordo annunciato con la DoubleClick
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Three Fools chime in on the social-networking site's valuation.
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The Humane Society of the United States will ask the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday to fine high-end retailers and designers of clothing that contains mislabeled fur from dogs, wolves and raccoon dogs
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Facebook will step up the policing of pornography, harassment, and inappropriate behavior on its social networking site, settling a&#160;consumer fraud investigation&#160;by New York State Attorney General (AG) Andrew Cuomo.
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Employers have been warned that they could be held liable for comments made by their employees on "blogs" or in chat rooms.