Google take note. Those spammy "Update to your YouTube Account" advertising "new features" are going to get you in trouble and I will not shed a tear.
Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
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Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#22So, that's like, a fraction of a percent of revenue of this particular online product? They may as well attribute it to marketing and keep doing it.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#23not only this but experian lets users sign up without confirming their email address. someone registered on MY email address and I had to spend about 7 hours on multiple phone calls over a period of 5 weeks in order to get control of an account with my email address, all to turn off their incessant spam. if you read their TOS technically you have to send a notarized letter with copy of photo ID social security number…
This seems to have happened to me somehow. I was forced to sign up to unfreeze my credit report (after freezing it years ago without an account) and now it has 2FA configured with a phone number that isn't mine. I have no idea how that happened and now I'm concerned that a stranger has control over my account. Hooray!
I tried calling to reset my password, which pointed me back to the website. The only other option is to reset it by mail. Amazing.
Edit: and to top it off, the reset password page references a security question & PIN, without ever asking for those. >If you do not know your security question or PIN, you will need to contact customer care to reset your password.
Edit 2: I just created a new account with a different email without a hitch. I got an email to the original address saying that there was a change to my account settings, leading me to believe that creating a new account simply changed the email address. Still no email confirmation though.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#24I believe you can express your displeasure with this settlement at Civil.Feedback@usdoj.gov, as well as to your elected congresspeople: https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#25These fines are pathetic. Experian revenues reached $6.2B last year. This is nothing more than the cost of doing business. Probably profited off the entire ordeal.
I find it difficult to frame it so I had to get the calculator out... that's 0.01048% of the $6.2 billion in revenues.
Or framed a different way, if you earn a US average salary of $60,000, it's a fine of $630...
That fine is a fart in the wind.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#26650k is not even a slap on the wrist for a company the size of experian.
Does 650k even cover the cost of labor the government incurred to investigate this and issue the fine?
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#27I’m still bitter that a credit reporting agency let my information get stolen, then offered free credit monitoring through Experian, and Experian just seems to be using this free monitoring for upselling. Hopefully this fine exceeds the revenue they generated from all this…
Experian once stole our credit card number, and wouldn’t stop making unauthorized charges to it.
Our bank was able to just block Experian, since Experian was a large percentage (“most”) of their fraud cases, and they didn’t want to pay to re-issue cards with new numbers.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#28650k is not even a slap on the wrist for a company the size of experian.
Under this sort of intense regulatory pressure, the CEO will really struggle to explain the 3 minutes' worth of lost income.
The fine is small contrasted to the bonuses required for the executive team since they had to work extra hard dealing with the fine thing.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#29I’m still bitter that a credit reporting agency let my information get stolen, then offered free credit monitoring through Experian, and Experian just seems to be using this free monitoring for upselling. Hopefully this fine exceeds the revenue they generated from all this…
Experian once stole our credit card number, and wouldn’t stop making unauthorized charges to it. Our bank was able to just block Experian, since Experian was a large percentage (“most”) of their fraud cases, and they didn’t want to pay to re-issue cards with new numbers.
That’s the sort of thing that should blow up on cnn for days on end…in a saner world.
Re: Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt out
#30Why even bother? 1mil is nothing to them. It probably cost more to process the check though legal and all the relevant departments