The Everalbum, Inc. Case, or How the Federal Trade Commission Protected Consumer Rights Regarding the Collection, Use, Storage, Dissemination, and Destruction of Facial Recognition Data

This essay aims to analyze and evaluate the In the Matter of Everalbum, Inc. case. The paper discusses the Ever facial recognition application, its history, how it was developed, and the effects of the user deactivation process. The following section outlines Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, focusing on unfair trade practices. The third section lists the issues in the case. The fourth section outlines the Decision and Order from the Federal Trade Commission regarding how the Commission demanded how Everalbum was to behave in the future. The comments by David Valentine and World Privacy Forum are summarized. A critique of the Order is provided, noting that by demanding that Ever album delete and destroy its facial recognition technology, the question of who then owned the technology is paramount. The essay concludes by observing that a balance must be struck between the benefits of employing facial recognition technology and its unknown and possibly unknowable detrimental effects.

The Application of the Federal Trade Commission Privacy and Safeguards Rules to the In the Matter Tax Slayer, LLC Case

This paper discusses what legally happened to TaxSlayer, LLC after a cyber break-in that occurred in 2015. The Federal Trade Commission sued the company, demanding that the organization institute robust cyber protections to ensure financial customer information security, confidentiality, and integrity. The article argues that the federal government’s actions were entirely appropriate, given its constitutional mandate to regulate commerce and protect the general welfare. However, with the relentless onslaught of cybercriminal activity, the steps demanded by the federal government may prevent, but not stop, the cybercriminal tide from rising, as King Canute observed many years ago.

The New Vertical Merger Guidelines: Muddying the Waters

The new U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission Vertical Merger Guidelines focus on how vertical mergers are likely to affect static pricing incentives. While vertical mergers can create incentives to increase prices, they can also provide incentives to decrease prices. Which of the possible outcomes is likely to occur depends on details that are generally difficult to measure. Potential competition between dominant firms, the theory of potential harm to competition that the 1984 Department of Justice Merger Guidelines stressed, remains a more compelling rationale for blocking vertical mergers than the likely effect on static pricing incentives.

Vertical Mergers and Input Foreclosure Lessons from the AT&T/Time Warner Case

This article offers a practical guide to analyzing vertical mergers using the general approach to input foreclosure and raising rivals’ costs that is described in the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines that were issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. The step-by-step analysis described here draws lessons from how that theory of harm played out in the lone vertical merger case that has been litigated by the antitrust agencies in recent decades: the 2018 challenge by the Department of Justice to the merger between AT&T and Time Warner. I testified in court as the DOJ’s economic expert in that case. I explain here how to quantify the increase in rivals’ costs and the elimination of double marginalization that are caused by a vertical merger and how to evaluate their net effect on downstream customers. I also explain how this economic analysis fits into the three-step burden-shifting approach that the courts apply to mergers under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. Based on my experience in the AT&T/Time Warner case, I identify a number of shortcomings of the 2020 Vertical Merger Guidelines.

Effectiveness of Travel Social Media Influencers: A Case of Eco-Friendly Hotels

With social media becoming the primary channel for travelers to acquire travel-related information, tourism service providers are increasingly partnering with social media influencers (SMIs) as part of their digital marketing strategy. The present study investigates the effectiveness of SMIs by examining the role that two message factors—argument quality and sponsorship status—have on travelers’ perceptions of a hotel’s commitment to sustainability and their intention to stay at the hotel. Results from four studies show that when eco-friendly hotels sponsor SMIs, an attribute-value message is more effective than a simple recommendation message in influencing travelers’ perceptions and intentions. Given the latest Federal Trade Commission regulations regarding sponsorship disclosure practices, the findings offer valuable insights for tourism providers using SMIs. The study findings suggest that SMIs should create sponsored messages that provide rational and objective information about the hotel’s sustainability practices to stimulate travelers’ related cognitions and persuade them to patronize the hotel.

U.S. FDA and FTC: Opioid Addiction and Health Fraud

Opioid addiction is a serious health epidemic that affects millions of Americans. Opioids are a class of drugs that include: the illegal drug heroin, synthetic opioids (fentanyl), and pain relievers available legally by prescription, such as: oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine and others. There are limited drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for opioid addition treatment. However, some marketers and distributors are illegally marketing products with unproven claims about their ability to help in the treatment of opioid addiction and withdrawal. Selling unapproved products with claims that they can treat opioid addiction and withdrawal is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C) Act, and making unsubstantiated therapeutic claims are also a violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising.

Deception in weight-loss advertising: Newspaper use of press releases issued by the Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulates advertising associated with dietary supplements, acting for consumers in cases of deception. This study examines the extent to which regional and national newspapers responded to 177 FTC press releases about deceptive claims associated with weight-loss supplements. Of 177 FTC press releases, 77 (43.5%) received at least some coverage in 212 newspaper reports; however, a relatively small number of releases accounted for the preponderance of coverage. Marked increases in news reports at certain points reflected FTC press releases involving multiple companies, new initiatives and the “superfood” acai berry.

TFD: TELECOM FRAUD DETECTION USING CONSOLIDATED WEIGHTED REPUTATION ALGORITHM

Noisy phone calls are aggravating and distracting, as well as frustrating. They may be classed as 'nuisance', 'emergency', 'random', and 'unsolicited' calls. Users have no inherent privileges on the internet; rather, their personalities are produced without any arrangement or evidence of involvement. It costs the U.S. communications company $8 billion per year to avoid call spam on the phone grid. Between January 2014 and June 2018, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) received over 22 million reports of fraudulent and illegal telemarketing calls. Nowadays, the mobile network is used to issue automatic phone calls such as robocalls. Since it operates on text, we struggle with the following: What tactics and methods do we use to combat spam? Telephone TFD (Telecom Fraud Detection) here is discussed first. Concerning spam, we advanced our proposal by proposing a targeted traffic detection using a single weighted credibility algorithm with appropriate weighting criteria.

Judicial Response to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

We study how the courts have responded to the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Looking at decided cases, we find that both the government and merging parties rely on the 2010 Guidelines in presenting their cases, each side respectively arguing that it should win if the court properly follows them . The 2010 Guidelines had the strongest effect on the case law in the area of unilateral effects, where a number of courts have embraced them in ways that clearly depart from earlier decisions. The case law now exhibits much greater receptivity to a government showing that the merger will lead to higher prices simply due to the loss of direct competition between the two merging firms. The courts also have followed the 2010 Guidelines by more willingly defining markets around targeted customers. We do not detect any effect on decided cases of the higher concentration thresholds found in the 2010 Guidelines. Both the average pre-merger level of market concentration and the average increase in market concentration alleged by the government in litigated cases to date declined after 2010 .