Find out what scams are happening in your area
By
Cody Rhew
Intern, Division of Consumer and Business Education
September 2, 2022
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Scams affect everyone. And we mean everyone — your family, friends, and neighbors. Don’t believe us? Look at the data.
Find consumer protection data from the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network over at ftc.gov/exploredata. There, you can learn more about what the millions of reports across the United States tell us about topics like identity theft, unwanted calls, and other types of fraud. We’ve sliced and diced the data so you can get a deeper look at how fraud affects everyone. For instance, you can see how fraud affects people from different age groups differently, or the types of reports we get from military consumers
.
Curious about what kinds of scams are in your neck of the woods? Check out this breakout by state or zoom all the way down into your nearest metro area
. And, to give you the most accurate information and up-to-date data, our numbers are updated on a quarterly basis.
Still not convinced that this tool is for you? This video will get you ready to explore:
One key piece of data: we couldn’t do this without you. Your reports help the FTC (and our 3,000+ law enforcement colleagues) investigate and bring cases against fraud, scams, and bad business practices. So: if you see a scam, fraud, or bad business practice — tell us about it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Keep up with the latest scams, and what else the FTC is doing, by signing up for the FTC’s Consumer Alerts.
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FTC sues company that sells consumers’ sensitive location information
By
Carol Kando-Pineda
Attorney, Division of Consumer and Business Education
August 29, 2022
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For many of us, our mobile phone is a constant companion, with us wherever we go. It’s also constantly collecting information about us, what we do, and where we do it. And unbeknownst to many of us, once that information is collected, much of it gets sold onwards in a murky marketplace of data brokers and advertisers. Because this market for our data is not transparent, it’s almost impossible to figure out who has information about us and what they’re doing with it.
Our phones can also reveal far more about us than we might realize: important details about our lives and where we’ve been. For example, our phones might be periodically sending their exact location to tech companies. This data can pinpoint our comings and goings with startling precision. Think what this might reveal: what therapist you’re seeing, what medical treatment you’re seeking, your visits to places of worship, and even your reproductive choices. This type of tracking can cause enormous harm to consumers, including stigma, emotional distress, discrimination, or even physical violence.
That’s why the FTC has sued Kochava Inc., a location data broker that sells massive amounts of precise location data collected from tens of millions of mobile users. According to the FTC, Kochava typically charges a monthly subscription fee to access its location data — but it’s also offered free samples, requiring only minimal steps to download. The FTC says that Kochava does not remove or obscure from its data feeds the location data pointing to sensitive locations, including locations associated with medical care, places of worship, reproductive health, homeless shelters and domestic violence shelters, and addiction recovery. The result is that any customer of Kochava could track consumers’ visits to these sensitive places. In fact, in its complaint, the FTC explains it was able to identify from Kochava’s data a mobile device that visited a women’s reproductive health clinic and then trace the same device to a single-family residence, likely making it possible to identify the owner of the device.
The FTC says that the sale of this sensitive data, which can pose such an unwarranted intrusion into the most private areas of consumers’ lives, is an unfair business practice and should be stopped. The case is ongoing.
FTC sues company that sells consumers’ sensitive location information
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