Federal Trade Commission

The Federal Trade Commission has issued its latest report to Congress on protecting older adults, which highlights key trends based on fraud reports by older adults, and the FTC’s multi-pronged efforts to combat the problem through law enforcement actions, rulemaking, and outreach and education programs. The report finds that older adults reported losing more than $1.6 billion to fraud in 2022. The report’s analysis shows that older adults filed the largest number of reports about online frauds—where consumers were first exposed to the fraud via social media, the web, or online ads.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a new proposed rule to prohibit junk fees, which are hidden and bogus fees that can harm consumers and undercut honest businesses. The FTC has estimated that these fees can cost consumers tens of billions of dollars per year in unexpected costs.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking action against Amazon for its years-long effort to enroll consumers into its Prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime. In a complaint, the FTC charges that Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime.