Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
2021 will go down in our minds as many things, including the year in which more people reported fraud and the highest dollar amount of fraud losses in history. Not a great statistic.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2021 (the Data Book), the FTC received 5.7 million reports from…
Another fall-out from the pandemic is that impersonation fraud has increased dramatically. According to the Federal Trade Commission, “the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a sharp spike in impersonation fraud, as scammers capitalize on confusion and concerns around shifts in the economy stemming from the pandemic.” Impersonation fraud costs “have increased an alarming 85 percent…
Gift card scams continue to be one of the most frequently-reported scams to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to its recent Scam Alert entitled Scammers are tricking more people into buying gift cards, “40,000 people reported losing a whopping $148 million in gift cards to scammers during the first nine months of 2021.”…
The Federal Trade Commission released a new enforcement policy statement on October 28, 2021, targeting the practice known as “Negative Option Marketing.” Negative Option Marketing is the practice of taking consumers’ silence as tacit consent in various circumstances, including automatic subscription renewals and free-trial marketing. In the statement, the FTC outlined four general requirements for…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a Final Rule on October 27, 2021, amending the Standards for Safeguarding Customer Information, known as “the Safeguards Rule,” under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which is applicable to a broad range of non-banking financial institutions. The FTC approved the Amendment by a vote of 3-2. The FTC’s press release states…
This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a Scam Alert to consumers notifying them that scammers are impersonating employees of the IRS promising a third Economic Impact Payment if they access forms through a link in an email or over the telephone.
The IRS warns consumers that governmental agencies, including the IRS, never call…
In an unusual but significant move, on August 4, 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) removed Aristotle International from the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Safe Harbor List. There were 7 organizations on the list, which were approved by the FTC to self-regulate themselves under COPPA, but with this first removal by the FTC,…
While smart toys can be useful educational tools for children, they also present some potential privacy risks and could invade what is traditionally considered a private space. Think about it—the thought of your child’s toy listening in on your family 24/7/365 is disturbing. So how do we balance these risks with the benefits?
Smart toys…
Another post pandemic fallout is the fact that rental car agencies have sold their fleets, for obvious reasons. In doing so, there aren’t enough rental cars for all of us who have been stuck at home and are now raring to go on vacation.
While the shortage of rental cars naturally means higher prices, and…
Robocalls continue to be irritating and their increased frequency is distracting and exhausting, at least in my experience. We can usually spot them when our caller ID says “potential spam” or if we don’t recognize the number, but robocallers are getting more sophisticated, just like other scammers.
A frequent and increased scam is one alleging…
