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Gift cards may be at the top of your holiday gift giving list. But there’s another list that gift cards top , and it’s decidedly less festive. According to the FTC’s latest Consumer Protection Data Spotlight, reports received in the Consumer Sentinel database reveal that gift cards are the #1 payment method of choice for scammers, leading to a reported $148 million stolen from consumers. Is your business taking steps to protect customers from...

Gift cards are an easy way to give. Reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel show they’re also an easy way to take. About one in four people who report losing money to fraud say it happened when a scammer tricked them into giving the numbers on the back of a gift card. 1 Gift cards are far more frequently reported than any other payment method for fraud, 2 and the numbers have reached staggering new highs compared to past years. 3 In the first nine...

As the holidays – and the end of the tax year – draw near, people are likely to approach small business owners with requests for charitable contributions. But scammers are hard at work with their own holiday rush. To protect your business from fraud and to amplify the impact of your donations on the charities that matter to you, these simple steps can help ensure that Giving Tuesday isn’t followed by Regretful Wednesday. A standard list of...

With more than a century of consumer protection experience under our belt, we at the FTC know that hard times for American families can be boom times for scammers. Today’s COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis creating fertile ground for fraud – and scammers today have a new and powerful weapon: social media platforms. These platforms generally earn their revenue by targeting users with advertising. The more time we spend on platforms consuming...

November 11th is Veterans Day, a time to honor the nation’s former military personnel. Every year more than 180,000 servicemembers leave the military to join the ranks of the nation’s 18 million veterans. When the troops transition back to civilian life, launching their next career — whether that means starting their own business or finding a job — is one of the first tasks at hand. Nearly 6% of all businesses are owned by veterans (according to...

If recent headlines about ransomware attacks on companies have you worried, your concerns are well-founded. Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency – you may know them as CISA – issued a Fact Sheet on Rising Ransomware Threat to Operational Technology Assets. The computer criminals who traffic in ransomware try to exploit vulnerabilities in technology and soft spots in human nature...

The FTC just sent almost $60 million in checks and PayPal payments to eligible drivers who had their tips illegally taken by Amazon. Our advice to Amazon Flex drivers: Watch your mailbox for a check. Our advice to companies that hire gig workers: Watch what you say to workers and customers – and live up to your claims. When customers placed orders through Amazon’s Prime Now or AmazonFresh services, Amazon asked “How much do you want to tip the...

If businesses make coronavirus prevention or treatment claims for their products, it’s time to get up to speed on the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act. The Department of Justice and the FTC just filed their latest action under the law, seeking civil penalties from the marketers of Xlear, a nasal spray the complaint alleges has been deceptively advertised to offer “up to four hours” of protection from COVID-19 and as “part of a layered defense to...

Money-making claims have been around for as long as there’s been money. They show up in promotions for gig work, multilevel marketing, “be your own boss” seminars, and work-from-home offers. But when tried-and-true tactics turn into tried-and untrue, the FTC has a long history of challenging deceptive claims related to money-making opportunities. Those misrepresentations are the subject of the FTC’s latest use of its penalty offense authority...

The �鶹��ý Trade Commission is aggressively hiring Technologists to help drive the agency’s work, ensure a vibrant technology marketplace, conduct investigations, and hold companies and people who violate the law accountable. If you’re a technology researcher, engineer, UX designer, content strategist, or product manager and are thinking about joining us in this new approach to our work, you may have some questions about working for the federal...