1: Protect Consumers
Prevent fraud, deception, and unfair business practices in the marketplace Other Information:
The FTC has jurisdiction over a wide range of consumer protection issues. To carry out its broad mission, it must make effective
use of limited resources by targeting its law enforcement and education efforts for maximum impact and by working closely
with federal, state, international, and private sector partners in joint initiatives. In addition, the agency engages in dialogue
with a variety of stakeholders to understand market concerns, and engages in and encourages study of and empirical research
on consumer protection topics. Recent news reports about data security breaches have heightened public awareness about the
importance of safeguarding sensitive consumer information. Data security is one of several areas of concern to the FTC in
its work to protect consumers’ privacy and combat identity theft. The FTC must have resources to address the misuse of consumers’
sensitive information and help consumers protect their privacy and identities. New and expanding technologies present challenges
for the FTC. The agency is working on matters involving spam, spyware and unauthorized adware, peer-to-peer file sharing,
and “phishing” to help protect consumers in the high-tech marketplace. Attacking telemarketing and business opportunity fraud
continues to be a challenge and a priority, as does protecting consumers from more traditional scams that have found new life
on the Internet, including pyramid schemes and health-related fraud. The Internet has become an especially fertile ground
for scam artists, who can reach vulnerable consumers easily and cheaply online and immediately access both a national and
an international marketplace. The FTC must put forward a long-term strategic vision to ensure that it keeps pace with new
technologies while continuing to address traditional and known fraudulent practices facing consumers in the marketplace. In
the consumer protection area, the FTC works with foreign agencies on investigations and cases that affect U.S. consumers.
Given the rise in consumer complaints involving crossborder fraud that has occurred over the last several years, the FTC must
continue to bring cases with international components. During FY 2005, the FTC released a report on proposed legislation,
the US SAFE WEB Act, that would improve the FTC’s ability to combat crossborder consumer protection law violations, particularly
violations involving spam and spyware. This legislation will give the FTC new tools to tackle cases with an international
component. Meeting the challenges of the global marketplace and forging partnerships with international parties are critical
to meet this strategic goal. Through cooperation with foreign consumer protection agencies and participation in international
organizations, the FTC can engage in cooperative foreign law enforcement actions and develop policies that promote consumer
choice in the international marketplace. The agency will continue to target its efforts based on the analysis of consumer
complaint data that it gathers. FTC databases – including Consumer Sentinel, Identity Theft Data Clearinghouse, Consumer Information
System, and spam database – enable the agency and its law enforcement partners to detect trends and problems that involve
fraud as they occur. The FTC’s prospective challenges include maintaining a rich array of data, ensuring that its systems
are fully used by the agency and its law enforcement partners, and ensuring that the information it collects is reliable.
The FTC also continually strives to identify new methods of mining this data and sharing the results in innovative ways to
assist its law enforcement partners. These efforts bear fruit in the cases brought by the FTC and other law enforcement agencies
who have access to this data. It is critical to the achievement of this goal that resources be available to maintain and update
these databases and data-mining capabilities.
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