[HN Gopher] Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam ema...
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Experian fined $650K by the FTC and DOJ for spam emails with no opt
out
Author : rntn
Score : 234 points
Date : 2023-08-22 19:04 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| geodel wrote:
| For people cribbing about fine being too small think 100 dollar
| speeding fine bothers people earning 100K pa. I think it does,
| because fine is still lose of money no matter how small and fine
| also comes with further restrictions / penalties in case behavior
| does not change.
| below43 wrote:
| In this case I think it would be more like a $10 fine.
| andersrs wrote:
| That's a couple salaries. Wow what a big deal.
| carpe171 wrote:
| at least it is some accountability. i've recently gotten
| marketing emails from box.com that require a auth code to opt
| out. i'm not sure how that is legal
| pc86 wrote:
| Seriously, it's ridiculous. There should be a _one-click_
| unsubscribe link at the bottom of every marketing email. You
| get click it, the email is immediately removed. None of this
| "please confirm your email" or "please wait ten days for
| processing" bullshit. Nobody is forwarding your marketing
| emails. It's not unreasonable to expect ESPs to generate the
| list at send time and not two weeks in advance.
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| No. There should be a some way to opt in, and not having done
| that, any "marketing email" should be illegal. Like it is
| here in EU.
| pc86 wrote:
| Of course you have to opt in, that's how it is in the US as
| well. I'm talking about opting out after the fact.
| winddude wrote:
| not anywhere near high enough for a company like that.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The two magic words that would have made this an excellent
| headline: "per person".
| za3faran wrote:
| Pocket change for them. Not even.
| exabrial wrote:
| 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.
| rvba wrote:
| The new spam method is updating some random policy every 2
| months and _informing_ about the new wording
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| So, 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.
| pg5 wrote:
| They should fine them for credit triggers too, as the phone spam
| is atrocious. They legally sell your info and the fact you are
| looking for a loan to sketchy mortgage lenders who will spam you
| for weeks.
|
| I know people who have experienced this firsthand, and it is
| terrifying. You can opt out of it, but nobody knows that until
| it's too late.
| flaviut wrote:
| I 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
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Maybe sign them up for Experian.
| dylan604 wrote:
| They're dumb enough to think that would be a serious hacking
| crime and come after you
| kens wrote:
| I'm happy to see Experian fined. Last year, Experian kept sending
| me spam with the footer "This is not a marketing email" and I
| kept trying to unsubscribe. Eventually, I filed a complaint with
| the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that this violated CAN-
| SPAM.
|
| I'd like to think that my report contributed to this fine
| (although that's probably optimistic). In any event, Experian had
| to take the time to respond. They also canceled my unwanted
| "complimentary membership with Experian CreditWorks Basic", which
| ended the spam. So I recommend filing complaints if appropriate.
| dpifke wrote:
| Your story sounded vaguely familiar to me, so I just looked in
| my email archive, and it appears I did the same thing around
| the beginning of 2021, when Experian also automatically signed
| me up for "CreditWorks" after I disputed fraud with them[0].
| They were sending almost-daily spam. ("Your Dark Web scan is
| complete!" "Congrats, your membership's been upgraded!"
| "Important Information about your credit score!")
|
| I wrote to the FTC instead of the CFPB, and got a form letter
| back for my efforts. Mail from *@*.experian.com is still
| blackholed, so I guess this is a good reminder that rule is
| there, if I'm ever required to deal with those assholes again.
|
| [0] Supposed past-due electric utility account in a state in
| which I've never set foot, let alone owned or rented property.
| Interestingly, this only showed on my Experian report, but not
| TransUnion or Equifax, so I'm pretty sure it was a reporting
| mistake as opposed to intentional identity theft.
| [deleted]
| loph wrote:
| A second's income shot to hell.
|
| Seriously, $650K? That's not going to stop this kind of behavior.
|
| Maybe 2 orders of magnitude more might make them sit up and take
| notice.
| jsnell wrote:
| It's not just a monetary fine. There are various other
| requirements put on them, for example they are on the hook for
| additional record-keeping and compliance monitoring for 10
| years, which probably means they need to be incredibly
| conservative about sending emails for at least that long.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| Or they just won't do any of that, assuming that it will take
| years for the government to give them another manageable
| fine.
| dubcanada wrote:
| CANSPAM has a limit to the size of the time
|
| > Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is
| subject to penalties of up to $50,120, so non-compliance can be
| costly.
| xigency wrote:
| They only sent about 10 emails then? Sounds dubious.
| rhuru wrote:
| $650K is like salary of a medium manager there. This should
| have beem $65M or so.
| vuln wrote:
| Sign up to Experian to freeze/unfreeze credit report? 5-10
| "upsell" emails per day.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| 650k is not even a slap on the wrist for a company the size of
| experian.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Does 650k even cover the cost of labor the government incurred
| to investigate this and issue the fine?
| throw9away6 wrote:
| No
| solardev wrote:
| Under this sort of intense regulatory pressure, the CEO will
| really struggle to explain the 3 minutes' worth of lost income.
| willcipriano wrote:
| 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.
| corndoge wrote:
| Some ICs make more than that, what a joke
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Why even bother? 1mil is nothing to them. It probably cost more
| to process the check though legal and all the relevant
| departments
| marcod wrote:
| And now for context, see this other front page story:
|
| Hackers can use credit bureaus to dox nearly anyone in America
| (404media.co) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672
| samstave wrote:
| They shouldnt be fined financially - they should be fined by
| adding 100 points to every single persons "credit score"
|
| And we need to kill the BBB
| datavirtue wrote:
| No one has to engage with the BBB.
| [deleted]
| syassami wrote:
| They did $1.447B in pretax income last year. This fine is ~4.5
| basis points.
| elif wrote:
| not 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 etc. etc. but
| thankfully i finally reached a human with a hint of
| reasonability.
| terr-dav wrote:
| 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.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| I hope that wasn't me! To avoid their spam I changed my email
| address in their system to a bunch of random letters/numbers a
| year or 2 ago. I made it pretty long. If that was your email, I
| apologize.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > if you read their TOS technically you have to send a
| notarized letter with copy of photo ID social security number
| etc. etc. but thankfully i finally reached a human with a hint
| of reasonability.
|
| Does that mean if someone signs you up under a false name, it's
| impossible to unsubscribe under the rules-as-written?
| dylan604 wrote:
| In some dark future, you will need to sign up for all
| websites just to prevent someone for doing this very thing.
| "It's not our fault you didn't sign up and allowed a
| fraudster to do it."
| bbarnett wrote:
| A TOS doesn't apply if you didn't sign up.
| xyst wrote:
| These 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.
| illwrks wrote:
| 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.
| pressbuttons wrote:
| I think you missed a few zeros (or a decimal). It would be
| $6.29
| schemescape wrote:
| I'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...
| hedora wrote:
| 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.
| ianai wrote:
| That's the sort of thing that should blow up on cnn for days
| on end...in a saner world.
| rhuru wrote:
| Yes. This happened to me as well. I once paid them for
| something and realized they have been charging the card
| monthly silently.
| digging wrote:
| > Hopefully this fine exceeds the revenue they generated from
| all this...
|
| Maybe if it were $650k per victim.
| munk-a wrote:
| A just punishment for Experian and other credit agencies is
| dissolution - these companies gain value purely through rent
| seeking and are publicly unaccountable while operating in an
| _extremely important_ field. Either the costs of background
| checks should just be shifted directly onto banks or we should
| have a government run public ledger of defaulted debts.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They can wave off fines all day. Forbid them from sending
| marketing emails for 24 months. See if anyone keeps their job
| after that.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Now I think about it, this is a much better approach than a
| fine. Is there a downside to this?
| mcronce wrote:
| The downside is that there's hardly any political will in
| the US to regulate businesses
| ouid wrote:
| [dead]
| digging wrote:
| Getting sued for "infringing upon their right to free
| speech," I'm sure.
| nektro wrote:
| 650k is a joke.
| dylan604 wrote:
| not a good one either. that's not even a knock knock level joke
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(page generated 2023-08-22 23:02 UTC)