A Blog About FTC regulations and happenings

An issue of major importance to cryptocurrency and digital token markets has been whether tokens were all to be considered securities under U.S. law. The SEC’s frequent admonishments that it would consider ICOs to be securities offerings has caused a dramatic slowdown in the U.S. ICO market. In one of the first cases to test… Read More

Effective July 1, companies that offer free gift or trial periods for their products or services can no longer bill California consumers automatically at the expiration of the gift or trial period. Companies will be required to provide a “clear and conspicuous” explanation of the price that will be charged—or how the pricing will change—at… Read More

Make room Europe: California is taking on the data privacy challenge. For the last year or so, the privacy world has been abuzz with how to implement the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation. The buzz died down once GDPR went into effect in late May. But no rest for the weary. A little over a… Read More

More consumers are adopting cryptocurrency than ever, but regulators are less enthusiastic. As a result, cryptocurrency exchanges spend unnecessary time and resources working to comply with outdated guidelines. Kraken, which oversees $150 million in daily cryptocurrency transactions, is the latest exchange to experience this problem. In an effort to bring itself into compliance with current… Read More

In a ruling announced today, the Supreme Court held that online businesses can be subjected to sales tax even in states where they do not have any brick-and-mortar operations. The case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., overturns longstanding precedent requiring “physical presence” to subject a seller to state sales tax, representing a big change for… Read More

  On June 6, 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a landmark ruling in LabMD v. Federal Trade Commission. While the Eleventh Circuit impliedly held that the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has authority to take enforcement action against companies whose unfair practices lead to data security incidents that pose… Read More

A public service announcement of yesteryear posed the following question to parents: “It’s 8:00. Do you know where your children are?” Today’s technology allows parents to answer that question regardless of the time of day. That technology, however, has recently drawn scrutiny for violating the parental notice and consent provisions of the Federal Trade Commission’s… Read More

The FTC is reported to be joining state and international regulators in examining Cambridge Analytica’s actions with data accessed from Facebook, including how the data analytics company obtained the information, what it did with the information, and whether Facebook complied with existing obligations, including a 2012 FTC consent decree. The situation underscores the importance of… Read More

In retrospect, it all seems so predictable. International capitalism creates virtual currencies. Banks are avoided. Millennials hail a new world order of anonymous or nearly untraceable market transactions. Numerous parties and exchanges hold on to large quantities of virtual currencies. But then the bad guys show up. And I’m not talking about the regulators. Last month, in what looks like the… Read More