Security News
Impersonation scams in the U.S. exceeded $1.1 billion in losses last year, according to statistics collected by the Federal Trade Commission, a figure that is three times higher than in 2020. The agency compiled this data based on 490,000 reported scams in 2023.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission warned today that scammers are impersonating its employees to steal thousands of dollars from Americans. FTC says its staff has received numerous reports from consumers who have fallen victim to scams in which fraudsters exploited the identities of agency personnel to coerce them into transferring or wiring money.
A pair of tech support businesses accused of swindling marks out of their hard-earned cash have agreed to cough up a $26 million settlement following an undercover probe by the FTC. Restoro and Reimage - both headquartered in Cyprus and, based on the the US watchdog's complaint and settlement proposal [both PDFs], two arms of the same operation - have been running a pretty typical Windows antivirus scam since at least 2018, or so the regulator alleged. "To replicate consumers' experience with defendants' marketing, FTC investigators made four undercover purchases of defendants' services," the FTC said in its complaint.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued tax preparation giant H&R Block over the company's deceptive "Free" online filing advertising and for pressuring people into overpaying for its services. H&R Block employs 70,000 tax pros working in over 12,000 offices worldwide and has reported a revenue of $3.5 billion in 2023.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has hit antivirus vendor Avast with a $16.5 million fine over charges that the firm sold users' browsing data to advertisers after claiming its products...
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will order Avast to pay $16.5 million and ban the company from selling the users' web browsing data or licensing it for advertising purposes. [...]
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission says Americans lost over $10 billion to scammers in 2023, marking a 14% increase in reported losses compared to the previous year. Imposter scams emerged as the most frequently reported fraud category, with notable upticks in business and government impersonation reports.
Blackbaud, which had data on millions of people stolen from it by one or more crooks, has promised to shore up its IT defenses in a proposed deal with the FTC. In announcing the draft settlement, the US watchdog's boss Lina Khan, Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, and Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya blasted Blackbaud - a cloud software provider for schools, charities, and other orgs - for its "Unfair and deceptive data security practices" in a statement [PDF]. "The FTC charges that Blackbaud's reckless data retention practices rendered its security failures much more costly: by hoarding reams of data that it did not reasonably need, Blackbaud's breach exposed far more data," they said.
Blackbaud has settled with the Federal Trade Commission after being charged with poor security and reckless data retention practices, leading to a May 2020 ransomware attack and a data breach affecting millions of people. The FTC's complaint alleges that the company "Failed to monitor attempts by hackers to breach its networks, segment data to prevent hackers from easily accessing its networks and databases, ensure data that is no longer needed is deleted, adequately implement multifactor authentication, and test, review and assess its security controls" and "Allowed employees to use default, weak, or identical passwords for their accounts."
Today, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ordered Intuit to stop promoting its software products and services as "Free" unless they're actually free for all consumers. As the FTC said, around two-thirds of all tax filers in the U.S. could not use TurboTax for free as advertised by the accounting and tax software provider, instead being hit with charges when it was time to file.