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To combat government and business impersonation scams and get money back to people, the FTC is considering changes to the law that would give the agency better tools. Want to help? Submit a comment on the rulemaking and make your voice heard.

Whether they call pretending to be from the Social Security Administration or email or text you claiming to be from a trusted business, impersonators are trying to steal your money or get your personal information — or both. And, for the past two years, they’ve been taking advantage of the confusion over the pandemic. The FTC’s data show that COVID-specific scam reports have included 14,069 complaints of government impersonation and 9,850 complaints of business impersonation. People have lost over $52 million to COVID-specific government and business impersonators since January 1, 2020.

Current law limits the FTC’s ability to combat these scams and return money to people who’ve lost money to these scammers. The FTC wants to change the law to make it easier to sue and get refunds for people who have experienced impersonation fraud. If you’ve experienced impersonation fraud, or have an opinion about the proposed rulemaking, submit your comment. All comments must be submitted online by February 22.

Topics
Credit, Loans, and Debt

It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.

The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.

  • We won’t post off-topic comments, repeated identical comments, or comments that include sales pitches or promotions.
  • We won’t post comments that include vulgar messages, personal attacks by name, or offensive terms that target specific people or groups.
  • We won’t post threats, defamatory statements, or suggestions or encouragement of illegal activity.
  • We won’t post comments that include personal information, like Social Security numbers, account numbers, home addresses, and email addresses. To file a detailed report about a scam, go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.

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