Most Internet marketing cases are handled by the the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP). The BCP deals with consumer issues involving unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business practices.

There are seven regional FTC offices. The BCP works with each regional office to conduct investigations and to file lawsuits (more on this later).

The five BCP divisions most relevant to Internet marketing are:

1) Advertising Practices 2) Marketing Practices 3) Financial Practices 4) Privacy and Identity Protection 5) International 6) Enforcement.

If you’re doing business in the United States using the Internet, chances are the FTC has a legal basis for regulating what you do.

All it takes is a complaint by a consumer, a consumers’ rights organization, or even a

competitor, and suddenly the FTC is investigating your business to see if you have broken the law.

Here’s a recent example of an FTC action against Internet marketing practices. In November 2006, a company agreed to pay $50,717 to settle FTC claims that it violated the CAN-SPAM Act.

The company had sent out e-mail messages to consumers using an autoresponder. Unfortunately, spam-filtering software prevented the company from receiving opt-out/unsubscribe messages and the e-mails kept coming.

Because this had continued for more than 10 business days after the recipients asked the company to stop sending e-mails, the company violated the CAN-SPAM Act.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.