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Employees walk through the building during Vivint’s Innovation Center grand opening in Lehi on Oct. 21, 2014. On Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission announced it had reached a $20 million agreement with Vivint Smart Home over abuses of customer credit information.
Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News
Vivint Smart Home is on the hook for $20 million in penalties and restitution following a settlement announced Thursday with the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s illegal use of customer credit information.
Under the settlement, Vivint will pay a $15 million civil penalty and an additional $5 million to compensate injured consumers.
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PINEVILLE A woman is suing Fluent Home for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and causing her damages.
The Bank of Missouri, which is doing business as Fortiva Retail Credit, was also named as a defendant in the suit.
Hilma Stover, an 80-year-old widow, was solicited on Oct. 12 by Larry Araiza, a salesman for Fluent Home, regarding a home security system and obtained a $40 activation fee from her, but did not provide her with any documentation, according to a complaint filed in Wyoming Circuit Court.
Stover claims when the installer arrived, the work was performed unsatisfactorily and Stove called Araiza to cancel the service, but when she did so he yelled at her and she advised him that she would keep the equipment safely stored until he could retrieve it, but Araiza never did and, instead, she received notice from Fortiva that she had been approved for a credit card that had a balance of more than $1,000.
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
The FTC recently provided guidance to companies on how to use artificial intelligence with an aim for “truth, fairness and equity.” The FTC reminded companies of three laws it enforces which have lessons for those in the AI space: Section 5 of the FTC Act (which would prohibit unfair algorithms, for example); the Fair Credit Reporting Act (which would prohibit algorithms that might deny housing, as an example); and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (which would prohibit algorithms that might result in credit discrimination on the basis of race, as an example).
These comments come almost a year after the FTC’s recommendations about AI, and show that the topic remains a priority for the FTC. In these recent comments, the FTC now provides more detail for developers of AI. These include:
Data Brokers and National Security
Sen. Ron Wyden speaks a town hall in 2017. (Joe Frasier, https://flickr.com/photos/146781514@N05/33115710686; CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
In the worlds of data protection and privacy, too often there is a decoupling of national security issues and what might be termed non-national security issues despite the clear interplay between the two realms. Over the past decade, U.S. adversaries have vacuumed up the personal data of many Americans with one nation possibly being at the fore: the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC was connected to the Office of Personnel Management and Equifax hacks, both of which provided massive troves of data the PRC has reportedly used to foil U.S. espionage and intelligence collection efforts abroad. What’s more, the collection of personal data did not stop with these hacks. In September 2020, an Australian security firm turned up evidence of an enormous trove of personal da
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In a unanimous ruling late last week, the U.S. Supreme Court slashed the Federal Trade Commission’s favored route to impose monetary penalties in consumer protection cases. Our Consumer Protection/FTC Team examines the decision, its immediate impact on enforcement actions, and Congress’s ability to step in to increase the FTC’s authority through legislation.
The Section 13(b) “shortcut” to remedy consumer harm is blocked
How will this affect the FTC’s enforcement program?
Will Congress step in to offer a fix?
Late last week, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in