The Federal Trade Commission is proactively encouraging start-ups to take cybersecurity seriously and include consumer data safeguards early in the innovation process.  At the FTC’s Start with Security conference in San Francisco on September 9, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez called on innovators to instill a “culture of security” early in the product development lifecycle.

In

Earlier this month, the New York City Commission on Human Rights provided enforcement guidance on the Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act (SCDEA).  The SCDEA took effect on September 3, 2015, and restricts employers from requesting or using applicants’ and employees’ credit history when making employment decisions.  The Commission referred to SCDEA as

The FTC announced it has changed the location and has re-opened registration for its second “Debt Collection Dialogue” in Dallas.  The September 29 event is now going to take place at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.  Pre-registration, which originally closed on August 13, was re-opened for this larger event.

More information

On September 4, the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin won dismissal of a putative class action alleging that it printed expiration dates and more than the last five digits of credit cards on receipts at its retail stores.  In Jeremy Meyers, et al. v. Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin (Civil Action No. 1:15-cv-00445,

In response to the CFPB’s request for information (RFI) regarding “best practices” for normalizing the data in the Consumer Complaint Database, issued on June 30, 2015, the American Bankers Association (ABA) submitted a comment letter that argues any efforts made by the CFPB to “normalize” data in its consumer complaints database – that is,

On August 28, the Federal Communications Commission issued a declaratory ruling holding that electronic faxes or “e-faxes” are covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Junk Fax Protection Act.  E-faxes are communications that originate as a fax, but are converted to electronic files during transmission and received as attachments to emails.  This ruling

In June, a former employee filed a class action complaint against Kohl’s Department Stores alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and California’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA) and Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act (CCRAA).  Kohl’s filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that the claims were time-barred under the FCRA’s two-year

In Murphy v. DCI Biologicals Orlando LLC, No. 14-10414, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 14632 (11th Cir. Aug. 20, 2015), the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a proposed class action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, holding that the plaintiff consented to receive text messages when he provided his

On August 4, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that legal pleadings can violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

In Marquez, et al. v. Weinstein, Pinson, P.S., et al., the plaintiffs argued that a law firm and its client violated § 1692e of the FDCPA by including

On August 25, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its monthly consumer complaint snapshot, which included a focus on complaints regarding credit reporting.  According to the snapshot, the CFPB has handled 105,000 credit reporting complaints, making them the third most popular type of complaint received by the CFPB.  The CFPB received nearly 7,000 credit