Blog

People who lost money to a telemarketing tech support scam will soon get an email with instructions to claim a partial refund. The refunds are the result of an FTC case against Advanced Tech Support, which also used the name Inbound Call Experts. At the end of a lawsuit brought by the FTC and the State of Florida, a federal court in Florida ordered the company to pay $10 million for customer refunds. The company deceived hundreds of thousands of...

To promote Contact Lens Health Week 2017, the FTC will be a guest on a live Twitter chat hosted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This year’s theme is Healthy habits mean healthy eyes, with an emphasis on encouraging youth to start healthy habits early, for healthy eyes later. The CDC is a federal agency that works to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability. The CDC...

It’s hard to pass up a job opportunity that promises a large income and the flexibility of working entirely from home. Especially when the opportunity appears at the top of your online search results and includes video testimonials of success stories, making it seem legitimate. The problem is, most of these job opportunities are scams and won’t deliver on their promises. Today, the FTC announced that a federal court put a temporary stop to a work...

Another day, another scam. Case in point: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports that scammers are telling people they can pay their bills using so-called “secret accounts” or “Social Security trust accounts” and routing numbers at Federal Reserve Banks. In exchange for personal information, like Social Security numbers, people get what they think is a bank account number at a Federal Reserve Bank. But this really is just a way to get your...

Usually, when I pay with a check, I write it out and sign it, or I direct my bank to send it on my behalf. But what if a check is drawn on my account but I didn’t write it, sign it, or tell my bank to send it? It can happen if someone has your bank account number: they can use your number to create a check that takes money out of your account. Now, if you’d already agreed to the charges, there’s no problem. But what if you didn’t? That means this...

As a consumer, you expect companies to honor their promises to protect your personal information. As the nation’s consumer protection agency, so does the FTC. Today, the FTC announced it reached an agreement with Uber to settle FTC charges that Uber abandoned its promises to take reasonable steps to protect consumers’ personal information and to make sure that Uber employees only accessed consumer information for appropriate business purposes...

You’re online, ready to buy concert tickets the second they go on sale, and then … they’re sold out. Were you beaten by a ticket bot? Here’s what you need to know. What are ticket bots? They’re computer programs that quickly buy up the best seats so the tickets can be resold elsewhere for more money. The Better Online Ticket Sales Act of 2016 makes it illegal to use computer software like ticket bots to game the ticket system for public concerts...

Consumers are reporting another government imposter scam – this time the scammers are pretending to be calling from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to reports, callers are telling people they’ve been selected to receive a $14,000 grant from NIH. To get it, though, callers tell people to pay a fee through an iTunes or Green Dot card, or by giving their bank account number. If you get a call like this from someone asking you to...

Military Consumer and @StopFraudCo will host a Twitter chat to talk about back to school issues for military families on August 10, 2017 at 1 p.m. M.T. / 3 p.m. E.T. We’ll talk about child identity theft, questions to ask when choosing a college, and tips for your college student about renting an apartment, buying a car, and online back-to-school shopping. Join in at #MilChat.

You’ve probably seen online ads with offers to let you try a product – or a service – for a very low cost, or even for free. Sometimes they’re tempting: I mean, who doesn’t want whiter teeth for a dollar plus shipping? Until the great deal turns into a rip-off. That’s what the FTC says happened in a case it announced today. The defendants sold tooth-whitening products under various names, and hired other companies to help them market the products...