Regulations continued to change in 2018 and no surprise, these five articles were amongst our most popular articles of the year.
- GDPR: New Guidelines Adopted For Jurisdictional Reach
There is good news for U.S. entities on the privacy front: on November 16, 2018, new draft guidelines were adopted in the EU to provide clarity with respect to the territorial scope of the GDPR, namely how the law will be applied to business entities located in different parts of the world (for our purposes, the United States). Lisa B. Dubrow, ESQ explains. - FTC Halts Online Marketers Responsible for Deceptive “Free Trial” Offers
A federal district court granted the FTC’s request to stop a group of San Diego-based Internet marketers, including Triangle Media Corporation, from deceptively advertising free trial offers and charging consumers for the trial product while also enrolling them in ongoing continuity plans without their knowledge or consent. - The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 California passed a new restrictive privacy law, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. Assuming the law is not amended before it comes into force on January 1, 2020, the law creates a private right of action for unauthorized access to a consumer’s “nonencrypted or nonredacted personal information.” Failure to address an alleged violation within 30 days could lead to a $7,500 fine per violation (which could be per record in the database, for example).The new law protects any “consumer,” defined as a “natural person who is a California resident.”
- New Vermont Law Passed Affecting Automatic Renewal
A consumer protection bill was passed in Vermont concerning contracts with automatic renewal provisions. The new law, which goes into effect on July 1, 2019, applies to “consumer” contracts with an initial term of at least one year and that automatically renew for a subsequent term longer than one month. - Recent FTC Settlement on Deceptive Offers
Five guidelines to stay on the right site of special offer compliance. Subscription marketing offers that include pricing claims such as “Yours for only $95. You save $50” and “Buy One Get One Free” are ubiquitous but unless those pricing claims are strictly true, they can violate Section 5 of the FTC Act. Lisa B. Dubrow, Esq. explains a recent case addressing deceptive pricing claims and provides some guidelines to keep you on the right side of offer compliance.
