LIFELOCK TO PAY $100M TO SETTLE CHARGES IT DIDN'T ABIDE BY COURT ORDER

Original Story: nbcnews.com

WASHINGTON -- LifeLock is paying $100 million to settle charges by federal regulators that it failed to take adequate measures to protect customers' personal data under a court order.

The Federal Trade Commission announced the settlement Thursday with the provider of identity-theft protection. The agency says it's the largest settlement it has won in this type of enforcement case. A Minneapolis class action lawyer is following this story closely.

The 2010 order by a federal court required LifeLock Inc. to secure customers' data, such as credit card and Social Security numbers, and to avoid false advertising claims. The order resulted from an action brought by the FTC and attorneys general in 35 states, alleging that LifeLock used false claims to promote its services. The company paid $12 million in that settlement, which went mostly to customer refunds, and agreed to make changes to its business practices.

The FTC said that LifeLock violated the order by failing to maintain "a comprehensive information-security program" and to avoid deceptive advertising.

LifeLock is based in Tempe, Arizona. Company co-founder and CEO Todd Davis used to put his own Social Security number on business cards and company trucks to advertise LifeLock's services.

LifeLock noted Thursday that it neither confirms nor denies the government's allegations under terms of the new settlement. Once it is approved by the court, the settlement will help bring to a close the FTC case as well as a class-action lawsuit, the company said. A Newark class action attorney is reviewing the details of this case.

"The allegations raised by the FTC are related to advertisements that we no longer run and policies that are no longer in place," LifeLock said in a statement. "The settlement does not require us to change any of our current products or practices. Furthermore, there is no evidence that LifeLock has ever had any of its customers' data stolen, and the FTC did not allege otherwise."

In the latest action, the FTC alleged that LifeLock violated the 2010 order in 2012-14. For example, the company falsely advertised that it would send alerts to customers "as soon as" it saw signs of possible identity theft, the agency said.

Of the $100 million LifeLock is paying consumers, $68 million may be used to reimburse consumers for fees paid to LifeLock under the class-action suit. The remaining $32 million will go to the FTC and also could be used to reimburse customers as ordered by any of the state attorneys general who participated in the action. An Atlanta class action lawyer provides legal counsel in many types of class action suits.

LifeLock's shares fell 30 cents, or 2.1 percent, to end at $13.99 in trading Thursday.

GOOGLE IS SUING A ROBOCALLER THAT TARGETED ADWORDS CUSTOMERS

Original Story: theverge.com

If you answer a phone call and hear a recording claiming to be Google, the odds are good that you're being scammed. That's the message of a new Google Business post and a new lawsuit from the company, targeting a company that used robocalling to target businesses using Google Adwords. A San Diego unfair competition lawyer is following this story closely.

According to the complaint, a company called Local Lighthouse Corp. made telemarketing calls to Adwords customers, using misappropriated logos and other methods to represent themselves as agents of Google. Once they gained a target's trust, they attempted to milk them for $100 fees in exchange for Search benefits like "front page domination." Based on those claims, the lawsuit alleges trademark infringement, false advertising, and unfair competition. A Roseland trademark lawyer is reviewing the details of this case.

Google says such scams are routine, but the company is usually unable to prosecute because scammers are too successful in hiding their tracks. In this case, the accused party is a California search engine optimization company, making it significantly easier for Google to take action. Still, the company reminded users that it rarely contacts Adwords users over the phone, and never does so through pre-recorded calls. Anyone receiving such a call should contact both Google and the Federal Trade Commission to lodge a complaint.

Google Under Investigation by FTC

The Google Inc. co-founders are slated for questioning by U.S. antitrust regulators and hired a top Washington law firm to help them prepare for their interviews, two people familiar with the matter said.

The Google executives retained Williams & Connolly LLP, the Washington law firm that has represented President Bill Clinton, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the late Senator Edward Kennedy, as counsel for the depositions, said the people, who didn’t want to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter. They didn’t know when the interviews are scheduled to take place.

The Google Chairman was questioned by the FTC June 5, another person familiar with the matter said.

Plans for the depositions come as the Federal Trade Commission speeds up its antitrust probe of operator of the world’s most popular Internet search engine. The agency’s chairman, said June 6 that he expects to complete the investigation by the end of the year. The FTC will then decide whether to sue Google.

Google disclosed on June 24 that the FTC had begun a review of its business practices. The FTC is focusing on whether Google unfairly ranks search results to favor its own businesses and increases advertising rates for competitors, people familiar with the investigation have said.

Answer Questions

Google states that they are happy to explain our business to regulators and answer any questions they may have.

In April, the FTC hired a Washington litigator to run the antitrust investigation, signaling that the agency may be building a case against Google.

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FTC Has Lunch with Google Exec

Story first appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman took time away from a Southern California technology conference to dine with a senior executive at Google Inc., the subject of an intensifying government antitrust probe.

The FTC chairman had lunch yesterday with Google’s senior vice president of advertising, at Catalina Kitchen at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. The pair were attending the D10 conference, put on by technology blog AllThingsD.

Google's senior VP of advertising spearheaded Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., an Internet-advertising company, and was involved in Google’s purchase of AdMob Inc., which specializes in mobile ads. Google’s advertising practices are part of the FTC’s antitrust investigation.

The agency is examining whether the company unfairly increases ad rates for competitors, people familiar with the matter have said. FTC officials have also asked rival shopping and review websites whether Google sells them prime advertising space on search results pages, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.

The FTC is seeking to determine whether Google is using its dominance to thwart competition among Internet companies. Google was used in 67 percent of U.S. searches in April, according to ComScore Inc., a Reston, Virginia-based market researcher.

There are certainly allegations that the search results have changed or evolved over the years. The FTC is trying to figure out if the evidence is there and what the theories are.

Investigation Intensifies

In a separate interview yesterday with Bloomberg, Leibowitz said he recently held meetings with executives at Square Inc., Reputation.com Inc., Zynga Inc. and Mozilla Corp. to discuss online privacy.

It’s valuable to keep lines of communication open” with leaders in the technology industry.

The investigation of Mountain View, California-based Google has intensified in recent weeks as agency lawyers prepare to question the company’s chairman and its chief defender against antitrust charges.

The agency in April hired a top Washington litigator, to run the antitrust investigation. The FTC CHairman states that when presented the opportunity to get someone of her stature and abilities, you would always want to take her up on it. It doesn’t mean that we’ve decided to bring a case at all, it just means that we have very competent counsel who can go toe-to-toe with Google's very competent counsel.

Google Shopping

Google said in a blog post yesterday that it’s starting a product-search service Google Shopping and will require retailers to pay for inclusion in the listings. Google rivals have criticized the company for giving preference to Google product listings in search results.
The charges to manufacturers and retailers represent a change in Google’s practices, an Internet search analyst, said in a column this week on the Marketing Land blog. In its 2004 initial public offering letter, Google said the company wouldn’t accept payment for including specific search results.

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Google In A Pinch Again

Story first appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Google Inc. is negotiating with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over how big a fine it will have to pay for its breach of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser.

The fine could amount to more than $10 million dollars. The fine would be the first by the FTC for a violation of Internet privacy as the agency steps up enforcement of consumers’ online rights.

The FTC is preparing to allege that Mountain View, California-based Google deceived consumers and violated terms of a consent decree signed with the commission last year when it planted so-called cookies on Safari, bypassing Apple software’s privacy settings. Google states that they will cooperate with any officials who have questions.

The cookies allowed Google to bypass Safari’s built-in privacy protections to aim targeted advertising at users of Safari on computers, laptops, iPhones and iPads. Google said at the time that it didn’t anticipate this would happen and that it was removing the files since discovering the slip.

The Safari breach was first identified by a Stanford researcher, who published a blog entry on his discoveries Feb. 16. ‘Unfair and Deceptive’

The FTC is charged with protecting consumers against “unfair and deceptive” practices under the law that created the agency. European regulators are probing Google more broadly on its privacy policy and sent a detailed questionnaire to the company in March.

Google signed a consent decree with the FTC last year in which it settled allegations it used deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy policies in introducing the Buzz social-networking service in 2010. The 20-year settlement bars Google from misrepresenting how it handles user information, and requires the company to follow policies that protect consumer data in new products and to submit to regular privacy audits.

The FTC has the authority to levy fines for violations of its consent decrees of as much as $16,000 a day for each violation.

First-Quarter Revenue

Google, the world’s largest Internet search company, on April 12 reported first-quarter revenue of $8.14 billion, excluding sales passed on to partner sites. Profit before certain costs was $10.08 a share.

The agency issued its largest fine in a privacy-related case against data broker ChoicePoint Inc. in 2006 for compromises of personal financial records of more than 163,000 consumers. ChoicePoint agreed to pay $10 million in civil penalties and $5 million in consumer redress in a settlement with the FTC.

Google is quickly becoming the privacy problem child for regulators in the U.S. and Europe. The Center for Digital Democracy has urged regulators to review the handling of consumer data by companies including Google, Facebook Inc. and Top SEO Companies. The Commission’s work to enforce its consent decree with Google shows there’s a real regulatory cop on the digital beat.


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Privacy Group Requests
Investigation Of Google By FTC
As Originally Posted to The Wall Street Journal

A privacy group has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Google Inc. has built adequate privacy protections into its software services, such as Gmail and the company's word-processing and spreadsheet offering, Google Docs.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the complaint Tuesday, a few weeks after Google admitted to accidentally sharing a small number of documents with users who lacked the permission to see them. The Washington, D.C., public-policy group has successfully prodded the FTC to make companies such as Microsoft Corp. change their privacy and security practices.

Separately, Google said that Dennis Woodside, a vice president, will succeed former Americas Operations head Tim Armstrong, who is leaving to become the new chief of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. Mr. Woodside, 40 years old, has managed Google's relationships with big European advertisers and agencies as vice president for the U.K., Benelux and Ireland, one of the company's biggest revenue-generating units outside the U.S.

In a statement, Omid Kordestani, Google's senior vice president of global sales and business development, said Mr. Woodside's "combination of entrepreneurialism and operational excellence" make him well-suited to take on the position. Mr. Woodside will be responsible for maintaining Google's relationships with the large U.S. advertisers from which it is trying to lure more business.

Meanwhile, Google was delivered a fresh attack from a privacy group that argues that using online software hosted by big technology companies such as Google, as opposed to software that runs on individual computers, raises a number of privacy concerns.

In particular, EPIC is asking the FTC to require Google to revise its terms of service to better explain its obligations to protect the data it obtains. EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said in an interview that he doesn't believe that Google is being upfront with consumers about the risks of using its online software, which is becoming more mainstream.

"It's an opportunity to let the commission look at the issue more closely, and I think Google is the right place to start," Mr. Rotenberg said.

A spokesman for Google said in a statement that the company hadn't yet reviewed the complaint in detail but had policies and technology "to ensure the highest levels" of data protection. "We're highly aware of how important our users' data is to them and take our responsibility very seriously," he said.

The complaint comes as Google has ramped up efforts to sell government technology officials on the benefits of upgrading their current systems to use "cloud computing" software applications such as Gmail. It also comes as the FTC, now under control of Democrats, has signaled its interest in taking a tougher stance regarding online privacy.