Category: The Authorities

The Hearing Clinic Fined £220,000

Claims Management Companies are the ones that make most of the cold calls – on behalf of their clients.

The Claims Management Regulator (part of the Ministry of Justice)  licenses firms and individuals to provide claims management services. It also has the power to take action when a regulated claims management business breaks the Conduct of Authorised Persons Rules.

The CMR received hundreds of complaints from recipients of calls from “The Hearing Clinic” about claims for noise induced hearing loss. Many complainants had previously subscribed to the “do not call” Telephone Preference Service, so the calls breached the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003.

Having investigated, the Regulator imposed a £220,000 fine on Aurangzeb Iqbal, the owner of “The Hearing Clinic” and various other businesses including “Industrial Disease Services,” “Hedging Redress,” and “We Claim 4 U.”

Various conditions were also imposed which applied to all claims management services operated under Mr Iqbal’s Regulator licence.

These included having to inform the Regulator on the 5th of every month of each TPS complaint received over the previous month. Mr Iqbal also has to provide the Regulator with full details of all subcontractors he proposes to appoint, plus an explanation and evidence of how he proposes to monitor these suppliers to ensure their compliance.

In its press release, the Regulator reported that from a peak of 3367 in 2011 the number of claims management companies has now fallen to 1752, with 105 having their licences removed in 2014. Further investigations by the Regulator are apparently ongoing and could lead to more sanctions.

Richard Lloyd, from consumer watchdog Which? said: “Hopefully this is the start of a concerted crackdown by Regulators, using their new powers to send a clear message that nuisance calling won’t be tolerated. This company made millions of unwanted calls so we welcome the Claims Management Regulator baring its teeth.

“The size of this fine should make other firms think twice before bombarding people with cold calls. We also need to see senior executives held personally accountable if their company makes unlawful sales calls.”

To complain to the Regulator, go to  https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/claims-management-regulator

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Disney Lawsuit Over Children’s Information

Amanda Rushing is suing The Walt Disney Company, Disney Electronic Content in a class action filed in California federal court.

She claims Disney is collecting personal information of children and tracking online behaviour and this is contrary to the law.

App developers can track children’s behaviour while they play online games with their mobile devices by obtaining critical pieces of data from the mobile devices, including ‘persistent identifiers,’ typically a unique number linked to a specific mobile device. . These persistent identifiers allow APP creators  to detect a child’s activity across multiple APPS and platforms on the internet and across different devices. This information is then sold to various third-parties who sell targeted online advertising.

The lawyer says that this is exactly the kind of practice the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act was enacted to prevent. Under COPPA, app developers and any third-parties working with them can’t legally collect personal information about children who are under the age of 13 without verifiable consent from their parents.

“Disney has failed to safeguard children’s personal information and ensure that third-parties’ collection of data from children is lawful”.

Rushing says her daughter was tracked while using the princess pets app, but the suit claims dozens of other games also track their users, including Club Penguin Island, Star Wars: Puzzle Droids, Frozen Free Fall and Disney Emoji Blitz.

Disney says that they have a robust COPPA compliance program, and maintain strict data collection and use policies for Disney apps created for children and families.

As it turns out, Disney had consulted with three partners to insert advertising-specific software into Disney Princess Palace Pets and some of its other applications. This gathers pieces of data and help advertisers detect a user’s activity via persistent identifiers. These persistent identifiers to track someone across multiple devices and apps with the intention of serving targeted ads.

Given this track record, parents and children might want to think carefully about downloading any of Disney’s apps. – stick to watching the movies instead.

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U.S. Charges 14 Over $147 Million Scam

Federal prosecutors criminally charged 14 defendants with involvement in a $147 million stock manipulation scheme orchestrated in a New York boiler room, which swindled dozens of senior citizens and other investors.

Employees of My Street Research, based in Melville, New York, obtained shares at below-market prices from insiders of five public companies, and conducted wash trades and other manipulative trading to drive prices up, according to  acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde.

My Street Research described itself as providing “unbiased stock research” and “top notch, detailed unbiased research.”

Prosecutors instead describe it as a boiler room operation that used high pressure sales tactics to inflate prices of shares which they or co-conspirators owned in a pump and dump operation – pumping up prices, then dumping stock on clients.

Victims were repeatedly pressured in cold calls and emails to buy shares and sign up for stock tips, and five defendants tried to launder $14.7 million of proceeds from the scheme, which ran from January 2014 to recently.

One such email, for the company Grilled Cheese Truck Inc, said “URGENT!!! MUST WATCH THIS LINK REGARDING THE ‘GRILLED CHEESE TRUCK'” and provided a link to a Fox Business Channel video titled “Soup Nazi Hits the Road with New Food Trucks”.

Prosecutors said the defendants Erik Matz, of Mt. Sinai, New York, and Ronald Hardy, of Port Jefferson, New York, managed the alleged boiler room My Street Research, which was previously called Dacona Financial, Power Traders Press and Trade Masters Co.

Other defendants include cold callers, people involved with stock research, and insiders or marketers affiliated with Grilled Cheese Truck, CES Synergies Inc, Hydrocarb Energy Corp, Intelligent Content Enterprises Inc and National Waste Management Holdings Inc, prosecutors said.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

Warning: Are You on a Sucker List

Scammers trade a list between themselves of people who have fallen for scams and it’s called a “sucker list”.

Sucker lists, which include names, addresses, phone numbers, and other information, are created, bought, and sold by scammers, spammers and some dishonest telemarketers. Scammers know that people who have been tricked once are easier to trick again. As a result, these people are flooded with letters, e-mails and phone calls about inheritances, lottery wins, health cures, investments etc.

In 2015, almost 200,000 people appeared on 13 different “suckers lists” that were seized by fraud investigators. Trading Standards said those listed were being sent mailshots inviting them to take part in lotteries, prize draws, competitions and special offers etc.

The average age of people on the list is 75. You can see how scammers target the elderly and vulnerable.

If you’ve ever been scammed, chances are your name could be on one.

How Do You Know if You’re on a Sucker List?

If you have been scammed online and get more scam messages and mail than others then chances are you are on a suckers list and there is no way to get off the list except by not responding to any scam messages for a long time. Evenetually they may lose interest in you.

How to Avoid Getting on a Sucker List:

Ensure you are registered on all mail and telemarketing opt-out or do-not-call lists.

The following article explains how to do register with the various preference services.

http://www.fightbackonline.org/index.php/fightback/17-how-to-fight-back/30-how-to-stop-spam-letters

Don’t reply to offers of money, miracle cures, competition wins etc. If you didn’t enter a competition then  you cannot have won one.

If you are truly being bombarded, consider changing your email address and/or phone number, and keep them confidential/unlisted.

In 2017, sucker’s lists held by National Trading Standards contained nearly 300,000 names.

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Anthem Agrees Huge Fine for Data Breach

Anthem Inc., is one of the largest U.S. health insurance companies and it has agreed to settle litigation, over hacking that happened in 2015, for a total of $115 million. The hack compromised  79 million people’s personal information.

Anthem said in February 2015 that an unknown hacker had accessed a database containing personal information, including names, birthdays, social security numbers, addresses, email addresses and employment and income information. The attack did not compromise credit card information or medical information, the company said.

Some of the money will be used to pay for two years of credit monitoring for people affected by the hack. Victims are believed to include current and former customers of Anthem and of other insurers affiliated with Anthem through the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

“We are very satisfied that the settlement is a great result for those affected and look forward to working through the settlement approval process,” Andrew Friedman, a lawyer for the victims, said in a statement.

The Indianapolis-based company did not admit wrongdoing, and there was no evidence any compromised information was sold or used to commit fraud.

Companies do not want the bad publicity of a data breach so most do their best to protect against such events. But some don’t make enough effort and maybe this huge pay-out  will convince them that it’s cheaper to protect the data than it is to fight court cases.

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Starting a Small Claims Court Case

Before starting a small claims case in the courts, you should have made a serious attempt to resolve the problem or your case could be rejected for that reason.

But if that fails, then you need to know who the defendant is – you cannot start a court case without clearly identifying the defendant.  It also makes a great deal of sense to take legal advice before starting a case so you will have a legal opinion on whether you have a winnable case.

The next step is to gather all relevant evidence and if you believe you have a good case then go to the government website https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/overview

The fees involved are for example £100 – £170 for cases where the money in dispute is between £1,000 and £3,000, but the full list of fees is available from that page.

Start your case.

You can start a case on paper rather than online but the fees are higher and the process will take longer.

To use the online service you need to have a Government Gateway login and password. If you don’t have this then get it in advance as it will take days to receive the details in the post. Go to http://www.gateway.gov.uk/ to register.

Make sure you have a strong case before going down this route and make sure you have exhausted other simpler options first.

The steps involved are further outlined in the article http://fightbackonline.org/index.php/guidance/12-explanations/70-using-the-small-claims-court-to-sue-a-scammer

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