Pop-star Selena Gomez is an international celebrity with 144 million followers on Instagram. That’s second only to soccer icon Cristiano Ronaldo who trumps her by 500 followers. So you might think companies would jump at the opportunity to enlist them as brand ambassadors. But companies are increasingly turning away from deals with mega stars like Gomez and Ronaldo and tapping lesser known social media personalities to represent their products. Too often, though, the liabilities involved…

The FTC’s Consumer Protection Division has long targeted advertisements for “work-at-home,” business and investment opportunities that exaggerate the earning potential and downplay risks. Recently, the FTC announced that it filed a complaint against four individuals doing business as “Bitcoin Funding Team” in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for deceptively advertising a cryptocurrency scheme that promised consumers that they could turn a cryptocurrency payment of approximately $100 into $80,000 in monthly…

In the largest-ever penalty issued against an ad agency, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Marketing Architects, Inc. (MAI) agreed to pay $2 million dollars to settle a false advertising complaint filed with the FTC and the State of Maine Attorney General’s Office. The ad agency came to the FTC’s attention after the Commission settled with Direct Alternatives (DA) and Sensa Products, LLC  for more than $16 million and more than $26 million respectively to…

On January 8, 2018, the FTC announced settlement of its first connected toy case with VTech Electronics Ltd (“VTech”) for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rules by failing to properly collect and protect personal information about and from children and violating the FTC Act by misrepresenting its security practices. In addition to paying a $650,000 civil penalty, VTech agreed to comply with COPPA, implement and maintain a comprehensive information security program with…