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Tag: fines and penalties

  • FCC issues historic $300 million fine against the largest robocall scam it has ever investigated | CNN Business

    FCC issues historic $300 million fine against the largest robocall scam it has ever investigated | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday cracked down on a massive illegal robocall operation responsible for billions of auto-warranty scam calls in recent years, with regulators imposing a record $300 million fine on what authorities said is the largest such network it has ever investigated.

    The globe-spanning illegal operation violated US telecom laws by making more than five billion robocalls to more than half a billion phone numbers over the course of just three months in 2021, the FCC said in a release Wednesday.

    But the campaign had been in existence for even longer, the FCC added. Using a multitude of shell companies, aliases and fly-by-night phone providers allegedly under their control, the people behind the network — which CNN has previously reported on — had sought to dupe unwitting consumers into buying shoddy service contracts for their vehicles since 2018.

    The ringleaders of the operation, Roy Melvin Cox Jr. and Aaron Michael Jones, were repeat offenders who had already been under judicial orders not to engage in telemarketing.

    A breakthrough in enforcement came last July, when Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit against the network that outlined many of the operation’s details, including its organizational structure. At the same time, the FCC directed US voice providers to stop carrying calls originating from providers used by the network.

    Within weeks, third-party industry estimates showed an 80% reduction in the volume of auto-warranty spam calls in the United States, and on Thursday, the FCC said the move ultimately led to a 99% reduction in such calls.

    The Ohio AG’s lawsuit had been the culmination of a joint state and federal investigation that also highlighted the growing effectiveness of technology and policies aimed at beating back the tide of illegal robocalls.

    For example, improvements in call-tracing have allowed investigators to quickly identify the source of unwanted, automated calls, while additional FCC policies have enabled regulators to block entire voice providers from the US telephone network for robocall violations.

    The partnership between the FCC and Ohio officials has also been replicated with 46 other states, the District of Columbia and Guam, with Hawaii and New Mexico joining the list on Thursday, the FCC said.

    It is now up to the Justice Department to collect on the federal fine, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement, adding that in the future, Congress should authorize the FCC to seek payment through the courts directly on its own.

    “We know the scam artists behind these calls are relentless — but we are coming for them and won’t stop until we get this junk off the line,” Rosenworcel said.

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  • TikTok fined $368 million in Europe for failing to protect children | CNN Business

    TikTok fined $368 million in Europe for failing to protect children | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A major European tech regulator has ordered TikTok to pay a €345 million ($368 million) fine after ruling that the app failed to do enough to protect children.

    The Irish Data Protection Commission, which oversees TikTok’s activities in the European Union, said Friday that the company had violated the bloc’s signature privacy law.

    An investigation by the DPC found that in the latter half of 2020, TikTok’s default settings didn’t do enough to protect children’s accounts. For example, it said, newly-created children’s profiles were set to public by default, meaning anybody on the internet could view them.

    TikTok didn’t sufficiently disclose these privacy risks to kids and also used so-called “dark patterns” to guide users toward giving up more of their personal information, the regulator noted.

    In another violation of EU privacy law, a TikTok feature designed as a parental control and known as Family Pairing did not require that an adult overseeing a child’s account be verified as the child’s actual parent or guardian, the DPC said. The lapse meant that theoretically any adult could weaken a child’s privacy safeguards, the regulator said.

    TikTok introduced Family Pairing in April 2020, allowing adults to link their accounts with child accounts to manage screen time, restrict unwanted content and limit direct messaging to children.

    The DPC’s decision gives the company three months to rectify its violations and includes a formal reprimand.

    TikTok didn’t immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    But in a blog post Friday, the company said it “respectfully” disagreed with several aspects of the ruling.

    “Most of the decision’s criticisms are no longer relevant as a result of measures we introduced at the start of 2021,” wrote TikTok’s European privacy chief Elaine Fox.

    The changes TikTok made in early 2021 included making existing and new accounts private by default for users aged 13 to 15, Fox said. She added that later this month, “we will begin rolling out a redesigned account registration flow for new 16- and 17-year-old users” that will default to private settings.

    TikTok did not say Family Pairing would now be verifying an adult’s relationship to the child. But the company said the feature had been strengthened over time with new options and tools. It added that none of the regulator’s findings concluded that TikTok’s age verification measures violated EU privacy law.

    In April, TikTok was also fined in the United Kingdom for a number of breaches of data protection law, including misusing children’s personal data.

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  • This company will make employees pay a hefty fine if they bother colleagues on vacation | CNN Business

    This company will make employees pay a hefty fine if they bother colleagues on vacation | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Getting urgent work emails from colleagues even during vacation? This is a common occurrence for many white-collar workers, especially in India where employees feel overworked and underpaid compared to their global peers, according to several studies over the years.

    But one Mumbai-based firm has come up with a novel way to fix this problem.

    Dream11, a fantasy gaming platform, will fine its employees 100,000 rupees ($1,200) if they contact colleagues with “work-related calls or messages” during their time off.

    This is part of the company’s efforts to ensure that its employees get to “switch off and enjoy a healthy work-life balance,” according to a statement shared by Dream11 with CNN.

    Under the policy, called Unplug, employees log off from all office work for seven days in a year.

    “Individuals who have opted for an unplugged leave are logged out of … emails, Slack and WhatsApp groups,” the statement added.

    The spokesperson did not share when the policy was first introduced. According to a December interview with CNBC, the company’s co-founders said the policy has been effective so far.

    Founded in 2008, Dream11 has more than 1,000 employees, is valued at $8 billion and includes Tiger Global and Tencent among its investors, according to to data platform Tracxn.

    Not taking a break can be dangerous for health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), working long hours is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year through stroke and heart disease.

    In a global analysis of the link between loss of life, health and working long hours, WHO and the International Labour Organization estimated that in 2016, some 745,000 people died as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week.

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  • NYC mayor, a vocal rat opponent, faces more fines for rat infestation at Brooklyn property | CNN

    NYC mayor, a vocal rat opponent, faces more fines for rat infestation at Brooklyn property | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    New York Mayor Eric Adams was hit with new fines over a rat infestation at one of his properties in Brooklyn, just one day after a different rodent infestation ticket at the same property was dismissed.

    According to two summonses from the New York Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) dated December 7, Adams is facing fines of up to $1,200 for failing to eliminate conditions that “encourage the nesting of rats” and failing to eliminate a rodent infestation shown by active rodent signs at a property he owns in Brooklyn.

    Adams said he’s “concerned” that he received the new summons and vowed to challenge them and show “that rats don’t run this city.”

    “As I have said repeatedly, it is so important that each of us does our part to address the rats that all New Yorkers hate and that’s why I keep my yard clean and garbage in covered trash bins,” Adams said in a statement to CNN.

    “I am concerned that, despite previously spending nearly $7,000 on rat mitigation efforts, I received two new summonses on the same day, even though a neutral hearing officer found that I ‘demonstrate[d] sufficient steps taken…to prevent and control infestation at [my] property.’ I will again challenge these violations and show that rats don’t run this city.”

    Adams was facing another fine for a rat infestation at the same property earlier in 2022, but the ticket was dismissed during a hearing on December 6, OATH records show – one day before the other fines were issued.

    The mayor has been very vocal about his personal vendetta against the rodents. He most recently recruited for a new “director of rodent mitigation,” aka “rat czar” to rid the city’s streets of its most notorious furry inhabitants.

    “Do you have what it takes to do the impossible?” the job listing read. “A virulent vehemence for vermin? A background in urban planning, project management, or government? And most importantly, the drive, determination and killer instinct needed to fight the real enemy – New York City’s relentless rat population?”

    A hearing date for the new violations has been set for January 12.

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  • Irish regulator fines Meta $275 million for violations of Europe’s data privacy law | CNN Business

    Irish regulator fines Meta $275 million for violations of Europe’s data privacy law | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    Meta has been fined roughly $275 million by Ireland’s data privacy regulator for failing to prevent hackers from siphoning off personal information from more than 500 million Facebook users in a 2019 data leak.

    Monday’s announcement marked the fourth time in about a year that Facebook

    (FB)    ’s parent company has been penalized by the Irish Data Protection Commission, the chief privacy regulator overseeing Meta’s operations in Europe. The decision to impose the fine was made last Friday, the commission said.

    Since the fall of 2021, Ireland’s DPC has slapped Meta with 912 million euros in fines, going after the social media titan and its other subsidiaries, Instagram and WhatsApp, for alleged violations of Europe’s signature data privacy law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

    Earlier this fall, Meta was hit with a 405 million euro fine over Instagram’s handling of children’s data, the second-largest GDPR fine in history. Other enforcement actions, in March 2022 and September 2021, led to fines of 17 million euros and 225 million euros, respectively.

    In a statement Monday, a Meta spokesperson said it was reviewing the DPC’s decision “carefully” and that it had cooperated fully with the agency’s investigation.

    The probe began last April after Business Insider reported that more than half a billion Facebook users’ details had been posted on an underground hacker website. At the time, Facebook said malicious actors had abused its contact importer tool to match known phone numbers against the profiles of Facebook users before harvesting additional information from their profiles.

    “Protecting the privacy and security of people’s data is fundamental to how our business works,” Meta said in Monday’s statement. “We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers. Unauthorised data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules and we will continue working with our peers on this industry challenge.”

    The Irish DPC’s decision comes amid broad criticism by privacy advocates that regulators have moved slowly and hesitantly to enforce GDPR, which went into effect in 2018.

    The largest GDPR fine to date was imposed last year on Amazon

    (AMZN)     for 746 million euros by privacy regulators in Luxembourg who said the way the e-commerce company processes personal data does not comply with the law. Amazon

    (AMZN)     is fighting the penalty.

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