DOJ: 3 LI ticket brokers that used bots face $3 7 million in penalties newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NEW YORK Most people who buy things online just have to worry about their deliveries being delayed or never arriving. But some people are dealing with a different problem altogether: getting weird stuff like hair clippers, face creams and sunglasses they never even ordered at all.
The Federal Trade Commission and cyber experts have been warning consumers about these deliveries, which can be part of something known as brushing scams.
Here s how these scams work: Third-party sellers on Amazon, eBay and other online marketplaces pay people to write fake, positive reviews about their products, or do it themselves. To be able to post the reviews, these so-called brushers need to trick the site into making it appear that a legitimate transaction took place. So they ll use a fake account to place gift orders and address them to a random person whose name and address they find online. Then, instead of actually mailing the item for which they want to post a review, the brushers will s
Thu, Jan 21st 2021 1:39pm
Karl Bode
Another day, another privacy scandal where the penalties do virtually nothing to prevent history from repeating itself. This time the focus is on the Flo Period period and fertility tracking app, which has struck an arguably pathetic deal with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it lied to app users about sharing private health information with third-party firms, including Facebook and Google. According to the complaint and settlement, Flo informed the app s users that customer data would be kept private. Instead, Flo sold consumer data, including the dates of user periods and their pregnancy plans with third parties:
To embed, copy and paste the code into your website or blog:
As expected, on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, Makan Delrahim, the Assistant Attorney General (AAG) for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), stepped down and Joseph Simons, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), announced that he would step down from the Commission entirely on January 29, 2021, clearing the way for President Biden to appoint new leadership at both Federal antitrust agencies. In addition, Chairman Simons announced the departure of a number of other senior staff from the FTC, including General Counsel Alden F. Abbott; Bureau of Competition Director Ian Conner; Bureau of Competition Deputy Directors Gail Levine and Daniel Francis; Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Andrew Smith; Bureau of Economics Director Andrew Sweeting; Office of Public Affairs Director Cathy MacFarlane; and Office of Policy Planning Director Bilal Sayyed.
Joseph Simons, an antitrust lawyer who has led the FTC since May 2018, is stepping down from his post effective Jan. 29.
Simons made the announcement Tuesday, on the eve of the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States: Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, Biden designated Rebecca Kelly Slaughter as the FTC s acting chair, the agency announced Thursday. Slaughter has served as an FTC commissioner since 2018 and previously served as chief counsel to Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, a Democrat who is now Senate Majority Leader.
With Simons’ pending exit from FTC, and recent revelations in POLITICO that Biden will nominate FCC commissioner Rohit Chopra to be the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Biden administration will need to fill two vacancies if the Senate confirms Chopra.