FTC

European Commission clears Intel’s acquisition of McAfee subject to conditions

by certifiedbug on January 28, 2011

in Software

Press release
Brussels, 26 January 2011
Mergers: Commission clears Intel’s proposed acquisition of McAfee subject to conditions

The European Commission has approved under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of McAfee, a vendor of information technology security, by Intel, both of the US. The approval is conditional upon a set of commitments ensuring fair competition between the parties and their competitors in the field of computer security, a growing concern due to the exponential rise in the number of malware such as viruses. The Commission was concerned that rival IT security products could be excluded from the marketplace given Intel’s strong presence in the world markets for computer chips and chipsets. In particular, the Commission worried about the high likelihood that the merged entity would embed its own security solutions into its chips and chipsets. To alleviate those concerns, Intel committed to ensuring the interoperability of the merged entity’s products with those of competitors.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved the acquisition in December.
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/FTC-gives-its-blessing-to-Intel-s-acquisition-of-McAfee-1158590.html

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FTC Endorses “Do Not Track”

by certifiedbug on December 1, 2010

in Internet Security

Press release

FTC Staff Issues Privacy Report Offers Framework for Consumers, Businesses, and Policymakers
Endorses “Do Not Track” to Facilitate Consumer Choice About Online Tracking

The Federal Trade Commission, the nation’s chief privacy policy and enforcement agency for 40 years, issued a preliminary staff report today that proposes a framework to balance the privacy interests of consumers with innovation that relies on consumer information to develop beneficial new products and services. The proposed report also suggests implementation of a “Do Not Track” mechanism – likely a persistent setting on consumers’ browsers – so consumers can choose whether to allow the collection of data regarding their online searching and browsing activities.

“Technological and business ingenuity have spawned a whole new online culture and vocabulary – email, IMs, apps and blogs – that consumers have come to expect and enjoy. The FTC wants to help ensure that the growing, changing, thriving information marketplace is built on a framework that promotes privacy, transparency, business innovation and consumer choice. We believe that’s what most Americans want as well,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/12/privacyreport.shtm

The makers of the popular Firefox Web browser are exploring ways to create a do-not-track mechanism that could offer Internet users a way to avoid being monitored online.

The effort comes just months after Firefox’s creator, Mozilla Corp., killed a powerful new tool to limit tracking under pressure from an ad-industry executive, The Wall Street Journal has learned. Mozilla says it didn’t scrap the tool because of pressure, but rather out of concern it would force advertisers to use even sneakier techniques and could slow down the performance of some websites.

Read more: Wall Street Journal

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Scams turned deadly

by certifiedbug on August 19, 2010

in Internet Security

Graham Cluley’s blog

A ghastly story reaches me of a man who committed suicide, after losing $50,000 to West African romance scammers.

67-year-old Al Circelli, shot himself in the living room of his home in Yonkers, New York, after – his family say – he became embroiled in an international romance scam that caused him to lose thousands of dollars and even steal from his relatives.

Circelli’s son Peter says he stumbled across evidence that his late father had wired considerable amounts of money to Ghana, and discovered email messages and photos on his father’s laptop supposedly from a woman called Aisha, who wanted to come to the USA to begin a new life and promised to bring a small fortune with her

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2010/08/19/romance-email-scam-drives-father-suicide/

Many victims have been devastated monetarily by such scams over the years. One can only imagine the emotional pain.

FTC: The “Nigerian” Scam, Costly Compassion

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt117.shtm

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FTC Obtains Court Order to Halt “Money Mules”

by certifiedbug on July 7, 2010

in Internet Security

FTC Press release

At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal court has halted an elaborate international scheme that used identity theft to place more than $10 million in bogus charges on consumers’ credit and debit cards, pending a trial. More than a million consumers were hit with one-time charges of $10 or less, and their payments were routed through dummy corporations in the United States to bank accounts in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

The defendants, using phony company names resembling real companies, and information taken from identity theft victims in the United States, opened more than 100 merchant accounts with companies that process charges to consumers’ credit and debit card accounts, according to the FTC complaint. The FTC believes the defendants may have run credit checks on the identity theft victims first, to be sure they were creditworthy. The defendants also cloaked each fake merchant with a virtual office address near a real merchant’s location, a phone number, a home phone number for the “owner,” a Web site pretending to sell products, a toll-free number consumers could call, and a real company’s tax number found on the Internet.

The FTC alleged that with spam e-mail, the defendants recruited at least 14 “money mules” – people in the United States they paid to form 16 dummy corporations, open associated bank accounts to receive the card payments, and transfer the money overseas. The defendants used debit cards linked to these bank accounts to set up telephone service, virtual addresses, and Web sites that helped deceive the card processors, according to the complaint.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/06/adele.shtm

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FTC Bars Marketing of Commercial Keylogger Software “RemoteSpy” for Illegal Uses

June 3, 2010

FTC Press Release 06/02/2010 The Federal Trade Commission has put the brakes on the business practices of an operation that was selling spyware and showing customers how to remotely install it on other people’s computers without their knowledge or consent. The FTC is announcing a settlement that bars the sellers of the “RemoteSpy” keylogger from [...]

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Consumer groups file new FTC complaint against Facebook citing privacy violations

May 7, 2010

Wednesday May 5th, fourteen privacy and consumer protection groups joined the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in filing a 38-page complaint against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, the Center for [...]

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Security Seal provider to settle FTC charges

March 3, 2010

FTC Press Release 2/25/2010. ControlScan, a company that consumers have relied on to certify the privacy and security of online retailers and other Web sites, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it misled consumers about how often it monitored the sites and the steps it took to verify their privacy and security [...]

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FTC Warns of Widespread Consumer Data Breaches on P2P

February 24, 2010

Press Release. Widespread Data Breaches Uncovered by FTC Probe The Federal Trade Commission has notified almost 100 organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and/or employees, has been shared from the organizations’ computer networks and is available on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks to any users of those networks, who could use it to [...]

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FTC Cracks Down on Con Artists Targeting Jobless Americans

February 18, 2010

Press Release. Scams Prey on Victims of the Recession With Bogus Job, Money-Making Schemes The Federal Trade Commission today announced a new crackdown on con artists who are preying on unemployed Americans with job-placement and work-at-home scams, promoting empty promises that they can help people get jobs in the federal government, as movie extras, or [...]

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FTC Lodges Contempt Charge Against BlueHippo

November 13, 2009

Press Release The Federal Trade Commission has asked a federal court to issue a contempt order against BlueHippo, a company that collected more than $15 million from consumers based on claims that it would finance their purchases of new computers, but delivered neither the financing nor the financed computers, in violation of a 2008 court [...]

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