[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 147 (Monday, August 1, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 45799-45801]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-19367]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for OMB 
Review; Comment Request

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission (``Commission'' or ``FTC'').

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ACTION: Notice; and request for public comment.

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SUMMARY: The FTC intends to conduct a survey of consumers to advance 
its understanding of the prevalence of consumer fraud and to allow the 
FTC to better serve people who experience fraud. The survey is a 
follow-up to two previous surveys--the first was conducted in May and 
June of 2003 and the second in November and December of 2005. Before 
gathering this information, the FTC is seeking public comments on its 
proposed consumer research. The information collection requirements 
described below are being submitted to the Office of Management and 
Budget (``OMB'') for review, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act 
(``PRA'').

DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before August 31, 2011.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file a comment online or on paper, by 
following the instructions in the ``Request for Comment'' part of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write ``Consumer Fraud Survey, 
Project No. P105502'' on your comment, and file your comment online at: 
https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/fraudsurvey2, by following the 
instructions on the web-based form. If you prefer to file your comment 
on paper, mail or deliver your comment to the following address: 
Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex 
J), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20580.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information 
should be addressed to Keith B. Anderson, Economist, Bureau of 
Economics, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Mail 
Stop NJ-4136, Washington, DC 20580. Telephone: (202) 326-3428.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

1. Background

    On September 1, 2010, the FTC sought comment on the information 
collection requirements associated with the proposed Fraud Survey (75 
FR 53697). No comments were received. Pursuant to the OMB regulations, 
5 CFR part 1320, that implement the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521, the 
Commission is providing this second opportunity for public comment. All 
comments should be filed as prescribed in the ADDRESSES section above, 
and must be received on or before August 31, 2011.
    In 2003, OMB approved the FTC's request to conduct a survey on 
consumer fraud. The FTC completed the consumer research in June 2003 
and issued its report, ``Consumer Fraud in the United States: An FTC 
Survey,'' in August 2004 (http://www.ftc.gov/reports/consumerfraud/040805confraudrpt.pdf).
    In November 2005, OMB approved the Commission's request to 
reinstate this clearance. The second survey was conducted in November 
and December 2005. A report, ``Consumer Fraud in the United States: The 
Second FTC Survey,'' detailing the results of that survey, was issued 
in October 2007 (http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/fraud.pdf). The 2005 
survey asked about consumers' experiences during the previous year with 
14 specific and two more general types of fraud. Among frauds covered 
by the survey were whether the person had purchased a weight-loss 
product that did not work as promised, whether the person had fallen 
victim to an advance-fee loan scam, and whether the person had paid 
someone to remove derogatory information from his or her credit report. 
According to the survey results, 30.2 million adults in the United 
States--13.5 percent of all adults in the country--had been a victim 
during the previous year of one or more of the frauds included in the 
survey.
    Among the 14 specific frauds included in the survey, the most 
frequently reported was the purchase of a weight-loss product that the 
seller represented would allow the user to easily lose a substantial 
amount of weight or lose the weight without diet or exercise. In fact, 
consumers who tried the product found that they only lost a little of 
the weight they had expected to lose or failed to lose any weight at 
all. This was experienced by 4.8 million adults--2.1 percent of the 
adult population.
2. Description of the Collection of Information and Proposed Use
    The FTC proposes to conduct a telephone survey of 3,600 randomly-
selected consumers nationwide age 18 and over--100 in a pretest and 
3,500 in the main survey--in order to gather specific information on 
the incidence of consumer fraud in the general population. To obtain a 
more reliable picture of the experience of demographic groups that the 
earlier surveys found to be at an elevated risk of becoming victims of 
consumer fraud--including Hispanics, African Americans, and Native 
Americans--the survey may oversample members of these groups. All 
information will be collected on a voluntary basis, and information on 
the identities of individual participants will not be collected. 
Subject to obtaining OMB clearance, the FTC will work with a consumer 
research firm to identify consumers and conduct the survey. The results 
will assist the FTC in determining the incidence of consumer fraud in 
the general population and whether its type or frequency is changing. 
This information will inform the FTC about how best to combat consumer 
fraud.
    The FTC intends to use a sample size similar to that used in the 
2005 survey. Many of the questions will be similar to the 2005 survey 
so that the results from it can be used as a baseline for a time-series 
analysis.\1\ The FTC may choose to conduct another follow-up survey in 
approximately five years.
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    \1\ The survey instrument for the 2005 Consumer Fraud Survey is 
attached to the 2007 report (referenced above) as Appendix B.
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3. Estimated Hours Burden
    The FTC will pretest the survey on approximately 100 respondents to 
ensure that all questions are easily understood. This pretest will take 
approximately 17 minutes per person \2\ and 28 hours as a whole (100 
respondents x 17 minutes each). Answering the consumer survey will 
require approximately 15 minutes per respondent and 875 hours as a 
whole (3,500 respondents x 15 minutes each). Thus, cumulative total 
burden hours will approximate 903 hours.
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    \2\ Staff originally estimated 15 minutes to complete the 
pretest, the same time as that needed for the actual survey. The 
revised estimate takes further into account the presumed added time 
required to respond to questions unique to the pretest itself.
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4. Estimated Cost Burden
    The cost per respondent should be negligible. Participation is 
voluntary and will not require start-up, capital, or labor expenditures 
by respondents.
5. Request for Comment
    You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to 
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before August 31, 2011. 
Write ``Consumer Fraud Survey, Project No. P105502'' on your comment. 
Your comment--including your name and your state--will be placed on the 
public record of this proceeding, including, to the extent practicable, 
on the public Commission Web site, at http://www.ftc.gov/os/publiccomments.shtm. As a matter of discretion, the Commission tries to 
remove individuals' home contact information from comments before 
placing them on the Commission Web site.
    Because your comment will be made public, you are solely 
responsible for making sure that your comment does

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not include any sensitive personal information, like anyone's Social 
Security number, date of birth, driver's license number or other state 
identification number or foreign country equivalent, passport number, 
financial account number, or credit or debit card number. You are also 
solely responsible for making sure that your comment does not include 
any sensitive health information, like medical records or other 
individually identifiable health information. In addition, do not 
include any ``[t]rade secret or any commercial or financial information 
which is obtained from any person and which is privileged or 
confidential,'' as provided in Section 6(f) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 
46(f), and FTC Rule 4.10(a)(2), 16 CFR 4.10(a)(2). In particular, do 
not include competitively sensitive information such as costs, sales 
statistics, inventories, formulas, patterns, devices, manufacturing 
processes, or customer names.
    If you want the Commission to give your comment confidential 
treatment, you must file it in paper form, with a request for 
confidential treatment, and you have to follow the procedure explained 
in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).\3\ Your comment will be kept 
confidential only if the FTC General Counsel, in his or her sole 
discretion, grants your request in accordance with the law and the 
public interest.
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    \3\ In particular, the written request for confidential 
treatment that accompanies the comment must include the factual and 
legal basis for the request, and must identify the specific portions 
of the comment to be withheld from the public record. See FTC Rule 
4.9(c), 16 CFR 4.9(c).
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    Postal mail addressed to the Commission is subject to delay due to 
heightened security screening. As a result, we encourage you to submit 
your comments online. To make sure that the Commission considers your 
online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/fraudsurvey2, by following the instructions on the web-based form. 
If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov/#!home, you also 
may file a comment through that Web site.
    If you file your comment on paper, write ``Consumer Fraud Survey, 
Project No. P105502'' on your comment and on the envelope, and mail or 
deliver it to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office 
of the Secretary, Room H-113 (Annex J), 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., 
Washington, DC 20580. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    Visit the Commission Web site at http://www.ftc.gov to read this 
Notice and the news release describing it. The FTC Act and other laws 
that the Commission administers permit the collection of public 
comments to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. The 
Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments that 
it receives on or before August 31, 2011. You can find more 
information, including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, in 
the Commission's privacy policy, at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.
    Comments on the information collection requirements subject to 
review under the PRA should additionally be submitted to OMB. If sent 
by U.S. mail, they should be addressed to Office of Information and 
Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, Attention: Desk 
Officer for the Federal Trade Commission, New Executive Office 
Building, Docket Library, Room 10102, 725 17th Street, NW., Washington, 
DC 20503. Comments sent to OMB by U.S. postal mail, however, are 
subject to delays due to heightened security precautions. Thus, 
comments instead should be sent by facsimile to (202) 395-5167.

David C. Shonka,
Acting General Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2011-19367 Filed 7-29-11; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6750-01-P