Masking Ads as News

The Established in 1914 under President Woodrow Wilson, the FTC is the United States government’s primary regulatory authority in the area of consumer protection and anti-competitive business practices in the marketplace. Its Bureau of Consumer Protection assumes the lead in the Commission’s efforts to eliminate deceptive advertising and fraudulent business practices at work in the economy. has shut down multiple fake news sites, and no, we’re not talking about Fox News and MSNBC, thank you very much.

The FTC alleged that multiple online marketers designed websites to look like legitimate news sites, but were actually nothing more than deceptive advertisements used to entice consumers to buy A magical fruit that is advertised as the natural cure-all for any possible ailment; usually found in ads featuring beautiful, exotic women. weight-loss products.  With titles such as “News 6 News Alerts,” “Health News Health Alerts,” and “Health 5 Beat Health News,” the sites falsely represented that the reports they carried had been seen on major media outlets such as ABC, Fox News, CBS, CNN, USA Today, and Consumer Reports.

The FTC charged, among other things, that those defendants:

• made false and unsupported claims that acai berry supplements will cause rapid and substantial weight loss;
• deceptively represented that their websites were objective news reports; and
• failed to disclose their financial relationships with the merchants selling the products.

The FTC reports that the settlements will yield about $1.6 million. As for what, if anything, the victims who were taken in by these sites will receive, well it appears the FTC has taken the 5^th on that issue.

For more information on fake news sites click here.