FTC

A bitcoin-related company that allegedly engaged in deceptive marketing of specialized computers designed to produce the cryptocurrency has been shut down at the request of the US Federal Trade Commission.

In a complaint filed earlier this month against Butterfly Labs, the FTC alleged that the Missouri-based company charged consumers thousands of dollars for computers that mine Bitcoins but then failed to deliver the machines "until they were practically useless, or in many cases, did not provide the computers at all," the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can be compelled to disclose details of the data security standards it uses to pursue enforcement action against companies that suffer data breaches, the agency's chief administrative law judge ruled Thursday.

The decision came in response to a motion filed by LabMD, a now-defunct medical laboratory that has been charged by the FTC with unfair trade practices for exposing sensitive information belonging to 10,000 patients in 2010.

Google's acquisition of Israeli mobile navigation app vendor Waze is going to get an anti-trust examination by the FTC.

Earlier this month, Mountain View's acquisition team flipped open the wallet to the tune of $US1.3 billion for the social map app, its sub-$US70 million revenue, and its claimed fifty million users. When the Chocolate Factory made its buy, Waze was also attracting the interest of Apple and Facebook.

 Operators of two alleged tech support scams that charged consumers hundreds of dollars to supposedly fix their computers have settled charges from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Mikael Marczak, doing business as Virtual PC Solutions, and Sanjay Agarwalla were among the subjects of six complaints the FTC filed against alleged tech support scams last September.

In February, 2012 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a report titled Mobile Apps for Kids: Current Privacy Disclosures are Disappointing (PDF) that pointed out that there was "little or no" privacy information available to parents in the Android Google Play and Apple iOS app stores prior to download and scarce data in the apps themselves or on the app vendors websites.

The affiliate ad network behind a tidal wave of bogus pitches for Acai Berry weight loss products and colon cleansers has agreed to pay a $2 million penalty to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for deceptive advertising.

The FTC announced the judgement on Wednesday against Clickbooth Affiliate Network of Sarasota, Florida and said the funds recovered from Clickbooth would be used to provide refunds to consumers who were taken in by the company's deceptive marketing practices.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a staff report on best practices for companies using facial recognition technology in their businesses.

"Fortunately, the commercial use of facial recognition technologies is still young," the report states. "This creates a unique opportunity to ensure that as this industry grows, it does so in a way that respects the privacy interests of consumers while preserving the beneficial uses the technology has to offer.”

The race against robots is on: the Federal Trade Commission is offering $50,000 cash to anyone that can come up with a way to eliminate the insidious telemarketing robocall, it announced Thursday. While it may take a sizable workload, a good kill-switch for the spammy pre-recorded messages could put an end to the annoying overtures on the phone to enter a new sweepstakes, qualify for a new credit card, or get a new energy provider.

The wars on privacy between search engines and web browsers continue despite Google's $22.5 million fine after the company was caught placing cookies on users' computers. Google took advantage of an Apple Safari bug that allowed the search engine engineers to bypass settings and place a cookie on the user's computer even if browser settings disallowed cookie placement. A lawsuit was filed, and the FTC ruled that Google must pay a fine for infringing on end-user's rights.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing a major hotel chain and its subsidiaries for allegedly failing to secure the financial information of its guests, which led to fraudulent charges of more than $10 million and the siphoning out of hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers.

The complaint (PDF), announced Tuesday, centers on the fact that New Jersey-based Wyndham Worldwide Corp. experienced three data breaches in under three years. In each case, the intruders made off with financial information by breaching the company's Phoenix data center.