1.1: Fraud, Deception & Unfair Practices

Identify fraud, deception, and unfair practices that cause the greatest consumer injury.

Other Information:

To fulfill its consumer protection goal, the FTC must identify consumer protection problems and trends in the fast-changing, increasingly global marketplace. The agency strives to understand the issues affecting consumers, including any newly emerging methods of fraud or deceit, so that it can target its enforcement, education, and advocacy to those areas where consumers suffer the most harm. The FTC reports this information to other law enforcement authorities and encourages those authorities to assist in its efforts, either independently or jointly. In this way, the FTC can leverage its resources by ensuring multiple "cops on the beat." To fulfill this objective, the FTC is using new technologies creatively and building on its broad base of private and public sector partners. The agency continues to collect consumer complaint information directly through four principal sources: (1) a toll-free helpline (1-877-FTC HELP); (2) an identity theft hotline (1-877-ID-THEFT); (3) the National Do Not Call Registry (1-888-382-1222); and (4) the online consumer complaint forms that support each of these efforts, as well as online forms dedicated to complaints from members of the U.S. Armed Forces and to cross-border fraud complaints. In addition, the FTC continues to gather consumer complaint information from other sources, including law enforcement agencies, Better Business Bureaus, and private entities. The agency makes this and other information available, through a secure Internet website called the Consumer Sentinel Network, to more than 1,700 law enforcement partner agencies in the United States, Canada, and Australia. In addition, the FTC maintains an electronic mailbox (spam@uce.gov) to which Internet users are encouraged to forward spam. This spam is stored in a searchable database enabling the FTC staff to track trends and identify law enforcement targets when researching potential cases. The agency augments identification of targets from its databases with other strategies for generating enforcement leads, such as ad monitoring, Internet surfs (monitoring the Internet for potentially false or deceptive advertising for a targeted product or service), and direct referrals from government and private sector partners. Performance Measures: - Complaints and inquiries collected and entered into the Consumer Sentinel Network database. - The percentage of the FTC's consumer protection law enforcement actions that target the subject of consumer complaints to the FTC. - The rate of customer satisfaction with the FTC's Consumer Response Center. The first performance measure will ensure that the agency assimilates a large number of consumer complaints, including complaints about Do Not Call violations. The agency will receive these complaints from a variety of sources, including direct consumer complaints to the FTC and complaints received by the FTC's partners. In this manner, the FTC will be collecting robust information to inform its law enforcement efforts. The second measure will ensure that FTC law enforcement actions target the subject of concerns identified by consumers. The third measure will ensure that the agency's Consumer Response Center is providing satisfactory service responding to consumers.

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Indicator:1

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