Beginning April 2, advertising for “free credit reports” will require new disclosures to help consumers avoid confusing “free” offers--which often require consumers to spend money on credit monitoring or other products or services--with the no-strings-attached credit reports available at AnnualCreditReport.com, or (877) 322-8228.Read more

On Dec. 22, 2009, more than six years since President George W. Bush signed into law the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the final rules that require creditors to provide consumers with a notice when they have been charged more for credit based on their credit score. The final rules implemented in FACTA amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the primary federal law that governs the use of credit reports.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) moved to protect distressed homeowners from the promoters of bogus foreclosure rescue and mortgage modification services by proposing a new rule that would forbid companies to charge upfront for these services. Instead, companies could only collect payment after providing services.Read more

According to a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed in December 2008, Gregory Navone, a mortgage broker from Las Vegas improperly disposed of about 40 boxes of sensitive consumer records collected by companies he had owned, including tax returns, mortgage applications, bank statements, photocopies of credit cards and drivers’ licenses, and at least 230 credit reports.Read more

Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, defines the word “simplify” as “to make less complex or complicated; make plainer or easier.” We as a society know that in today’s times, when government interjects itself in the affairs of the people in order to make things “simple,” that simplicity doesn’t always come to fruition, and in fact, often results in unintended negative consequences.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), as part of its crackdown on mortgage scams, has charged three more defendants with promoting phony mortgage relief services. According to court papers filed by the FTC, the three defendants were part of an operation that falsely claimed that in exchange for up-front fees ranging from $299 to $699, it would get consumers’ mortgages modified, lowering their monthly mortgage payments.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it is lowering from $11 to $10.50 the maximum amount that consumer reporting agencies are allowed to charge consumers for an extra copy of their credit report. The Commission announced the reduction in the amount from 2009 to 2010 under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which requires the FTC each year to revise the cap originally set by statute based on the change in the Consumer Price Index. The fee is rounded to the nearest .50 cents.Read more

The sale and use of mortgage trigger leads has successfully cleared another legal challenge recently, when the Second Circuit Court upheld the prior decision to dismiss a challenge to the practice by Premium Mortgage Corporation of Rochester, N.Y. This comes after the three national credit bureaus, lead by their trade association, the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), successfully filed a lawsuit against the Minnesota Attorney General to stop a Minnesota law that would have effectively banned the practice in July of 2007.Read more

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) is on the way and its gestation stage will not be as long as many expect.¹ Although its nascence will endure the inevitable crucible of politics churned out by the Congress, federal and state regulatory bodies, bank and non-bank industry lobbyists, and eminent legal scholars,² the actors in this drama seem to argue, at one extreme, for a CFPA with robust oversight and regulatory enforcement authorities, and, at the other extreme, some kind of oversight agency that reviRead more

Eight federal regulatory agencies have released a final model privacy notice form that will make it easier for consumers to understand how financial institutions collect and share information about consumers. Under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB Act), institutions must notify consumers of their information-sharing practices and inform consumers of their right to opt out of certain sharing practices.Read more