The percentage of consumers who have experienced fraud via fake notifications about shipments, fraudulent online ads or other scams has increased over the last year, when 76% of AARP survey respondents indicated they had been targeted.
At its November 15, 2023, Open Meeting, the FCC adopted a Report and Order implementing new rules to protect cell phone consumers from SIM swap and port-out fraud, two practices that bad actors use to take control of consumers’ cell phones.
Well, it’s another month with sort of weird results. Somewhat bucking long term trends, FDCPA (+14.7%) suits were up in October while TCPA (-17.3%) and FCRA (-7.8%) were both down. YTD however, TCPA (+11.5%) was the only one up from last year, while FDCPA (-13.4%) and FCRA (-2.1%) were trending downward.
The attorneys general of 20 states and territories, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, recently sent letters to the heads of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) requesting that the agencies partner with the states and “take appropriate action” to clarify that federally chartered institutions must cooperate with state attorneys’ general information requests, and that their failure to do so is unsafe, unsound, and may give rise to unfair or abusive acts and practices.
In this final edition for 2023, the number and breadth of data privacy and security enforcement actions demonstrate that state AGs are flexing their muscles and playing a significant regulatory role in this area. Some of the trends that are emerging and are likely to continue include: