[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