FTC Settles With 3 Companies Over Allegations of False Participation in Privacy Shield
Decusoft, Md7 and Tru Communication, doing business as TCPrinting.net, separately settled FTC allegations they misled consumers about participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement and failed to complete the certification process, said the agency in a Friday news release. Commissioners…
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voted 2-0 to issue the administrative complaints and accept the consent agreements, which will be published in the Federal Register and available for comment through Oct. 10. The complaints are the first enforcement cases since the trans-Atlantic data protection and sharing arrangement was established in early 2016 (see 1602020040 and 1602040018). The companies are barred from misrepresenting their participation in privacy or data security programs sponsored by governments, self-regulatory regimes or standard-setting organizations and must comply with FTC reporting requirements, the release said. Tru Communication owner Jon Harris told us he used a third party to get self-certified with Privacy Shield and received a letter from the organization saying his small business was certified. But he said the letter may have meant he was certified with the third party, not Privacy Shield. "We got confused," he said. Harris said the website statement his company is Privacy Shield-compliant was removed. He said he isn't pursuing Privacy Shield certification because it's long and complicated and it was at the behest of one of his foreign customers. The other companies didn't comment. The agency said it also filed a complaint against Decusoft for falsely claiming participation in the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield framework. Almost 2,500 companies participate in the EU-US framework.