United States - FTC Charges Operators of “Jerk.com” Website with Deceiving Consumers

The FTC has charged the operators of the website "Jerk.com" — a supposed social networking site and reputation service — with tricking people into paying for site memberships to dispute profiles. According to the FTC, Jerk encouraged users to label people, including teens and kids, a “jerk” or “not a jerk.” The more than 70 million profiles also had space for users to add information like someone’s age, address, phone numbers, school, employer, and more. Some teens’ profiles included insults about their physique or sexual orientation.  Many people found out about the profiles when they searched for their name online and saw a profile pop up as a top result. What’s worse, according to the FTC, most profiles weren’t created by real users, but by the company, which created websites on Facebook that they used to harvest Facebook users’ photos and information for its site. When people paid $30 for memberships in the hope of disputing the profile or having it deleted, they found their so-called memberships were worthless, and their profiles remained.The FTC is seeking an order barring the defendants’ deceptive practices, prohibiting them from using the personal information they improperly obtained, and requiring them to delete the information.