§6102 Telemarketing Rules

Summary

The Federal Trade Commission must make rules that ban lying or other harmful telemarketing. The rules must define deceptive telemarketing and include fake charity pitches. The rules may cover people who help or hide scams, like those who launder credit card payments. The FTC must also ban patterns of repeated unwanted calls that a reasonable person would find harassing or an invasion of privacy, limit what hours telemarketers can call, and require clear, quick disclosures. Sellers must tell the person on the call that they are trying to sell something and give key facts like what and how much. Charity callers must say they are asking for donations and give the charity’s name and mailing address. The FTC must think about recordkeeping rules too. The FTC makes these rules under the usual federal rulemaking process and must talk with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau if a rule touches consumer financial products or services. Breaking these rules counts as an unfair or deceptive practice under other federal law, and also counts under the Consumer Financial Protection Act for people covered by that law. The Securities and Exchange Commission has six months after the FTC’s rules take effect to make similar rules for brokers, dealers, investment advisers, and related people unless it finds existing securities rules already do so or that a new rule is unnecessary; if so, the SEC must explain why. The FTC’s rules do not apply to certain futures-market persons covered by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.