FTC and market arms face delays during the shutdown

The federal shutdown is now underway, and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it will not accept consumer fraud complaints. To that end, the FTC will not assist US citizens in blocking spam calls, and it will not grant early merger approval during the shutdown.

“The FTC is closed during the government shutdown. This means we won’t be able to answer your questions on X. Consumers cannot report fraud or register for do not call during this time,” the agency’s Office of Technology said in a post on X.

FTC and market arms face delays during the shutdown

The federal government shut down today after lawmakers failed to reach an agreement on a funding bill, halting key operations across multiple agencies. Consumer advocates charge that the shutdown will compound existing rollbacks in consumer protections and leave millions of Americans exposed to risks. 

Now the agency that enforces laws against anticompetitive and deceptive business behavior will leave consumers unprotected for at least a month. Besides that, about 780 workers will stay home, while the other 400 will work without pay until after the shutdown.

According to the agency, the FTC’s fraud reporting website and national registry, which allows individuals to opt out of telemarketing, will not be available during the shutdown.

In addition, Wall Street dealmakers can still file for clearance for mergers and acquisitions. But the agency will stop granting early clearance to deals that do not pose a threat to competition during the shutdown. 

The FTC’s shutdown plan under President Donald Trump is similar to the one the agency put in place under Joe Biden’s presidency. During Biden’s era, the agency had stopped granting early clearance entirely.

Meanwhile, the FTC is suing Zillow and Redfin, two of the biggest names in real estate, saying they unfairly worked together to reduce competition in the online multifamily rental listing market.

The FTC says that the companies broke federal antitrust laws earlier this year when Zillow paid Redfin $100 million to re-host Zillow’s multifamily rental ads on Redfin and its sites.

A survey reveals that only 12% go to FTC after scams

In a survey conducted by the Global Anti-Scam Alliance, respondents said they are almost daily victims of scams, and those who do fall victim lose more than $1,000 on average.

Most of the people who answered the poll from the US said that they regularly fall for scams. In fact, 77% of those people said that scammers try to trick them once a day on average. 70% of US citizens report being scammed in the last 12 months. More than 20% of those who were impacted lost money to scams. On average, they lost $1086.70.

74% of people who fell for a scam reported it, but 57% say they didn’t see the platform take any action about it. Similarly, 82% of Americans who were scammed reported the incident to their payment service, but only 44% were able to recover at least some of the stolen money. However, 38% were unable to recover any money at all. Without a doubt, there is a big gap between settlement and restitution.

Additionally, the study found that when Americans report scams, 25% first go to business organizations, while only 12% go to consumer protection officials like the FTC. Still, many believe reporting is pointless. 18% of non-reporters say they didn’t bother because they assumed nothing would be done.

Additionally, 80% of scams originate from digital platforms that facilitate direct messaging. Text messages, emails, and phone calls are the most common methods scammers use to contact people. People said that X, Snapchat, and Telegram were the slowest to react to scam reports. Gmail, Facebook, and Instagram were most often linked to scams.

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