President Trump fired two Democratic commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, from the Federal Trade Commission, a move that reflects his broader effort to assert control over administrative agencies and reshape the federal government. Trump’s firing has mainly come under question due to the 110-year-old precedential case of Humphrey’s Executor Read More
The Federal Trade Commission announced that it is requiring H&R Block to make a number of changes for the 2025 tax filing season in addition to longer-term changes. The settlement also requires the company to pay $7 million to be used to compensate its customers that were harmed by the Read More
The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has finalized a Junk Fees Rule which essentially prohibits businesses in the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries from using bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to hide total prices and bury “junk fees.” The rule will ensure that pricing information is provided Read More
In April 2023, the Federal Trade Commission announced that that it would be banning noncompete agreements in order to promote competition. Although this historic announcement was meant to change the entire landscape of the employment industry within the U.S., the FTC’s push to ban these agreements raised much skepticism from Read More
As a result of the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation, the Department of Justice sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance with flagrantly violating a children’s privacy law—the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act—and also alleged they infringed an existing FTC 2019 consent order against TikTok for violating COPPA. The complaint alleges Read More
The Federal Trade Commission issued orders to eight companies offering surveillance pricing products and services that incorporate data about consumers’ characteristics and behavior. The orders seek information about the potential impact these practices have on privacy, competition, and consumer protection. The orders are aimed at helping the FTC better understand the dense Read More
The Federal Trade Commission announced that it is holding online used car dealer Vroom responsible for misrepresenting that it thoroughly examined all vehicles before listing them for sale and failing to obtain consumers’ consent to shipment delays or provide prompt refunds when cars weren’t delivered in the time Vroom promised. Read More
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has prohibited data broker X-Mode Social and its successor Outlogic from sharing or selling sensitive location data as part of a settlement resulting from allegations that the company sold precise location data that could be used to track people’s visits to private locations. In its Read More
The Federal Trade Commission has proposed changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) that would place new restrictions on the use and disclosure of children’s personal information and limit companies from profiting from children’s data. With these proposed changes, the FTC intends for the Act to reflect technological Read More
The Federal Trade Commission has altered its data security rule, known as the Safeguards Rule, to require nonbank financial firms—including mortgage brokers, auto dealers, and payday lenders—to report data breaches to the agency, according to an announcement made Friday. The FTC’s Safeguards Rule requires non-banking financial institutions, such as mortgage brokers, Read More
