MilConsumer Blog Feed

It used to be that family legends about background and heritage had to stay legendary. But the popularity of genetic test kits have made them a hot topic around the Thanksgiving table. A proposed FTC and California settlement with CRI Genetics reminds companies in this burgeoning sector that their claims are covered by established federal and state truth-in advertising standards. What’s more, the case reinforces key principles relevant to any advertiser about product reviews and the allegedly deceptive use of digital dark patterns.

As text-to-speech AI has improved, so has voice cloning technology. The prospects could be promising, but from the FTC’s perspective, voice cloning also presents serious consumer protection concerns. The FTC is committed to using a wide range of tools to prevent harm to the public. That’s the reason for the just-announced Voice Cloning Challenge.

Yes, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, the tree does make a sound. And, yes, if a data breach happens and you fail to timely notify affected customers, that’s an unfair practice. That’s just one of the lessons businesses can learn from the FTC’s proposed settlement with Global Tel*Link (GTL) and its subsidiaries, Telmate and TouchPay.

Today, the FTC is announcing the Voice Cloning Challenge to address the present and emerging harms of artificial intelligence- or “AI”-enabled voice cloning technologies. Speech synthesis has been around for several decades. [1] Perhaps one of the most famous examples is CallText 5010, the robotic-sounding speech synthesizer [2] Stephen Hawking used after he lost his voice in 1985. And now, going beyond digital voices like Hawking’s and Apple’s...

A consumer spots a social media post from a dietician stating – for example – “Aspartame increasing cancer risk?! Nope! Let’s talk about it” and “It’s okay to still enjoy your non-sugar-sweetened beverages” because “these beverages are absolutely no threat to your health.” Wouldn’t it be material to consumers to know the dietician was being paid by a trade association to convey those messages? FTC staff warning letters sent to two trade associations and a dozen dieticians and other online health influencers don’t sugarcoat the principle that failure to include clear disclosures in social media posts could violate the law.

Junk fees – those hidden and bogus charges that have found their way into a wide variety of transactions – are on consumers’ minds. Based on what they’ve told us, junk fees are on their last nerve, too.

Cloud computing has emerged and grown significantly over the recent decades – from its infancy in 2004, to a $576 billion industry in 2023. [1] FTC’s Office of Technology, Bureau of Competition, and Bureau of Consumer Protection worked together to examine four specific areas of cloud computing through a Request for Information (RFI) and a public panel of cloud computing experts. These areas included competition, single points of failure, security...

Consumers speak many languages and unfortunately scammers are conversant in all of them. That’s why the FTC has reinforced its fraud fighting capabilities by collecting scam reports in multiple languages . As a member of the business community, you can lend a hand by sharing these new resources with employees, friends, and others in your network. To report in Mandarin, Tagalog, Vietnamese, French, Arabic, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, and...

Personal finance app Bridge It – consumers may know the company as Brigit – promised that people could get cash advances of up to $250 “within seconds” and with no “hidden fees.” But the FTC alleges that for many consumers, Brigit was a bridge to false promises, extra charges, and dark patterns that made it easy to sign up for its $9.99 per month membership, but hard to cancel. In addition to an $18 million financial remedy, the proposed settlement will require the company to bridge the gap between its promises and its practices.

We’re ba-aack. Last year we offered our Top 10 “Nightmare on Main Street” consumer protection horror movies. Just in time for Halloween, the FTC Multiplex has reopened with ten more scary screens of deceptive practices.