Tag: FTC

  • That OTHER Consumer Agency: Why the FTC remains important

    Posted by

    Katie Porter

    Hoofnagle bookSince the launch of the CFPB, we haven't blogged as frequently at Credit Slips about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It remains hard at work, and in fact, I think has used some of the shift of some of its responsibilities to the CFPB to focus on a number of cutting edge issues. For example, their conferences and reports on big data analytics are top notch.

    Chris Hoofnagle, UC Berkeley, has written an excellent book about the FTC and its approach to privacy. In part, it is an institutional history, using the FTC Act's passage and the advertising cases of the 1960s and 1970s to understand how and why the FTC is approaching privacy concerns today. The digital economy, the socialization and personalization of consumer finance, and alternative scoring algorithms all present new questions for privacy law. His thoughts on how the FTC developed in reaction to troubling applications of the common law are particularly useful in thinking about how courts might interpret new issues created by CFPB regulations. Business practitioners, consumer advocates, and academics will all benefit from Hoofnagle's analysis.

    FTC Privacy Law and Policy also contains a look at the FTC's role in policing credit reporting agencies and the credit reporting regulations. Hoofnagle is even-handed, pointing to both successes and weaknesses on that front.

    This is definitely worth a read, and I'm happy that it's available in paperback at an affordable price. I think the book also would make a great foundational text in a seminar on consumer law.

  • CFPB’s Anti-Abuse Authority: A Promising Development in Substantive Consumer Protection

    Posted by

    Jean Braucher

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing something promising with its anti-abuse authority under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.  It is going after credit industry exploitation of consumers, particularly when business models involve using confusing terms that disclosure cannot adequately address.  See my paper on this topic. So I was not surprised to see George Will attacking this development.   We can't have smart, effective consumer protection, no matter how popular it might be.

    In a column published in many newspapers this week,Will wrote: “The CFPB's mission is to prevent practices it is empowered to ‘declare’ are ‘unfair, deceptive, or abusive.’ Law is supposed to give people due notice of what is proscribed or prescribed, and developed law does so concerning ‘unfair’ and ‘deceptive’ practices. Not so, ‘abusive.’”

    The flaws in Will's critique are legion. First, the CFPB has given lots of notice of what it is doing, in a detailed examination handbook.

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  • Disclosure Debates (. . . same old, same old)

    Posted by

    Amy Schmitz

    We talk about disclosures, and the importance of reading our consumer contract terms before committing to any deal. However, does anyone really care about contracts? Let’s face it: Contracts have become largely meaningless until we run into problems and want to use the “terms” for ammunition to get a remedy. I am a Contracts Professor and often bypass e-contract terms when I am in a hurry or know that I could never get the terms changed. We are all lazy in reading contracts. I have confirmed this in my own research, which I wrote about in Pizza-Box Contracts: True Tales of Consumer Contracting Culture, published in the Wake Forest Law Review.  Disclosure debates are not new.

    At the same time, texting and tweets as forms of disclosure have augmented shrouding and other tactics for effectivley hiding terms and contract modifications. The Federal Trade Commission hosted a one-day public workshop on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 to consider the need for new guidance concerning advertising and privacy disclosures in online and mobile environments. The workshop focused especially on challenges of making disclosures clear and conspicuous in social media and mobile marketing.

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