FTC

The Federal Trade Commission granted an approval for video game maker Electronic Arts to purchase PopCap Games.

In a move to better position itself in a competitive social game market EA decided to enter into a deal estimated at up to $1.3 billion to acquire PopCap that owns licenses for such popular video games as "Bejeweled" and "Plants vs. Zombies."

The FTC put the deal on a list of approved transactions. It issues the list several times a week.

Scammers are trying to capitalize on the widespread reports about cancer threats posed by the use of the cell phones.

The Federal Trade Commission decided to step in and help consumers evade being scammed into buying products that supposedly "shield" users from cell phone emissions.

An antitrust investigation into Google’s dominance in the search market is being considered by the Federal Trade Commission, according to the Bloomberg report.

However, before the FTC decides whether to launch such an investigation it needs to wait for the decision of the Justice Department that considers whether to challenge Google's planned $700 million purchase of airline ticketing software company, ITA Software Inc, Bloomberg said, citing the sources with the knowledge of the matter.

The US Federal Trade Commission has approved proposed settlements of the complaints against three credit report resellers after the regulator accused them of insufficient cybersecurity practices that led to compromised credit reports.

The companies named in the administrative complaints were SettlementOne Credit and its parent company, Sackett National Holdings; ACRAnet; Fajilan and Associates, doing business as Statewide Credit Services; and founder Robert Fajilan.

Scammers Marc D’Souza and his father, Maurice D’Souza, who operated an online “scareware” scheme, were ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to pay more than $8 million to settle charges of using deceptive ads to trick people into thinking their computers were infected with malicious software, and then sold them software to “fix” their non-existent problem.

The settlement was announced this week and the fine imposed on the defendant would be used to reimburse victims of the scam.

Scammers have hammered out a new scheme that may defraud unwitting people of big amounts of money. Now the scam is related to WikiLeaks. Victims who are supposed to be rich enough are called by an automated system that states their computer and IP address "had been noted as having visited the Wikileaks site, and that there were grave consequences for this, including a $250,000 or $25,000 fine, perhaps imprisonment".

Panicked marks are given a dedicated phone number to discuss payment terms if, certainly, these people are stupid enough to be deceived by the trick.

A lawsuit against nationwide scam scheme that defrauds millions of Americans under guise of governmental help was filed by the US Federal Trade Commission. The regulators has asked a court to stop a "far-reaching" Internet enterprise that allegedly made millions of dollars by luring customers into trial memberships for bogus government grants and money-making schemes, then repeatedly charging them monthly fees for memberships they never ordered.

The Federal Trade Commission is taking further steps to wrestle deceptive mortgage advertising practices with a new rule proposal to ban misrepresentations for all mortgages while allowing the FTC and the states to seek civil penalties against those who violate the rule.

The proposed rule would prohibit all material misrepresentations in advertising about consumer mortgages. The proposed rule lists 19 examples of misrepresentations about fees, costs, obligations, and other aspects of credit that would be violations.

Federal Trade Commission along with the Federal Communications Commission are warning consumers against disadvantages of prepaid calling cards. Though they may be a convenient way to have you phone always connected hidden costs and other problems can leave consumers with less call time than they were promised.

The FTC offered this advice:

A popular Internet microblogging service Twitter has agreed to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission over counts of putting its users at risk of identity theft by failing to protect their private information.

Under the terms of the settlement Twitter is creating an independently audited security program, among other measures.

The law to distribute waste and used laptops among small business owners is being promoted to the US Congress. Two US senators on Monday introduced their bill to help small businesses that want access to broadband services and new technologies.

The bill pushed by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana is based on the recommendations from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's broadband plan, released in March.

As Facebook is facing more and more legal challenges and seems unwilling to make any concessions in changing its outrageous policies it has hired a former FTC chairman Tim Muris.

Last week Muris was granted a lifetime achievement award by the FTC. He will presumably help Facebook see off complaints from the likes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Facebook has also hired ex-American Council of Civil Liberties lawyer Tim Sparapani.

An investigation into Apple’s possible violation of anti-trust regulation is now being considered by the two regulators which have not decided who of them will take the role in probing the Cupertino company. The investigation relates to Apple’s requirement that its programming tools should be used to write applications for the iPad and iPhone.

This report comes as Apple and Adobe are in hot confrontation that reached its peak on weekends when Steve Jobs wrote an open letter to Adobe that was immediately commented in response by the Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen.

As the unemployment situations is worse than ever in the United States many scammers are exploiting the circumstances to trick unwitting people into paying money for fake vacancies or offerings. On Wednesday the Federal Trade Commission announced it is cracking down on orchestrators of such kind of fraudulent schemes that target the unemployed with bogus job placement.

Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy organization, and the Center for Digital Democracy, an advocate of open access to the Internet, sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the regulator to hinder Google's purchase of AdMob, a provider of advertising services for mobile phones. The two groups explained their move as based on antitrust and privacy concerns.