The ad tech industry might soon be facing a more punitive FTC. While the consumer privacy and protections agency traditionally came down on blatantly fraudulent advertising, like rebilling scams, or improperly targeting children, the influx of data-driven technology has required the FTC to reevaluate its agenda. With consumer privacy protections becoming a more pressing issue, […]
Federal Trade Commission members said during a House hearing Wednesday that the FTC does not have the authority to adequately punish companies that misuse consumer data. Several data privacy scandals over the last year and a half prompted the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. Equifax’s data breach in 2017, for example, released personal information […]
The Federal Trade Commission will soon be populated by a completely fresh crop of appointees with no holdovers from the previous administration. It’s an irregular situation. But what it means for advertisers and for the commission’s future direction is still unclear. President Trump finally sent his nominations for four commissioners out of five to the […]
Television viewing data is sensitive. And because consumers don’t expect such data to be collected, smart-TV manufacturer Vizio was penalized for doing so without an opt-in. Vizio paid the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) $2.2 million to settle charges over its data collection practices on Monday. The settlement requires that Vizio delete its old data and […]
The Federal Trade Commission is watching smart TVs. An FTC workshop on Wednesday in Washington, DC, laid out consumer privacy concerns around smart-TV tracking and sought to clarify how the ad industry is using the data that’s being collected. “Consumers expect some level of data collection when they use their computer,” said Jessica Rich, director […]
Earlier this week, Mary Engle, the Federal Trade Commission’s associate director of advertising practices, suggested to attendees at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads I/O conference that publishers could be held responsible for native ads deemed misleading that run on their properties. Read the original story by AdExchanger’s Sarah Sluis. Readers interested in her comments can now check out the above […]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants to know what marketers are doing with segmentation profiles like “urban scrambler” and “ethnic second city struggler.” The potential for advertising segmentation to exacerbate inequality was a central topic at Monday’s FTC workshop, “Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?” The Washington, D.C., event included representatives from advocacy groups […]
The Federal Trade Commission has officially updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) with new restrictions that go into effect today. The changes include a ban on collecting location data from site owners and app developers with properties aimed at children. Since 2000, COPPA has required website operators whose sites are directed at users younger […]
Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, must fix three areas within its third-party-cookie-blocking patch before it can be rolled out to users, according to Stanford graduate student Jonathan Mayer, who developed the patch. The problematic areas involve “underblocking,” i.e. inadvertently allowing unwanted tracking cookies past Firefox’s cookie blocking patch, Mayer explained in a blog […]
