[Federal Register Volume 81, Number 234 (Tuesday, December 6, 2016)]
[Notices]
[Pages 87936-87938]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2016-29149]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION


Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; 
Comment Request

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

ACTION: Notice.

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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 will be a 
follow-up to three previous surveys, the most recent of which was 
conducted between November 2011 and February 2012. 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 on the proposed information requests must be received 
on or before January 5, 2017.

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 
2016: Paperwork Comment, FTC File No. P105502'' on your comment and 
file the comment online at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/fraudsurvey2016 by following the instructions on the web-based form. If 
you prefer to file your comment on paper, mail your comment to the 
following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 
600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Suite CC-5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC 
20580, or deliver your comment to the following address: Federal Trade 
Commission, Office of the Secretary, Constitution Center, 400 7th 
Street SW., 5th Floor Suite 5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC 20024.

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 H-238, Washington, DC 20580, Telephone (202) 326-3428.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
    Background: On March 31, 2016, the FTC sought comment on the 
information collection requirements associated with the proposed Fraud 
Survey (81 FR 18628). Three comments were received.\1\ 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 January 5, 
2017.
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    \1\ The comments are available at https://www.ftc.gov/policy/public-comments/initiative-658.
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    As part of its consumer protection mission, the FTC has brought 
hundreds of cases targeting perpetrators of consumer fraud and has 
committed significant resources to educational initiatives designed to 
protect consumers against such fraud. In order to ensure that its 
efforts in fighting fraud are as effective as possible, the Commission 
would like to make certain that it has current data on the prevalence 
of various types of consumer fraud.
    The Commission has conducted three previous surveys designed to 
estimate the prevalence of consumer fraud among U.S. adults. The most 
recent survey was conducted between November 2011 and February 2012. A 
report describing the findings of that survey--Consumer Fraud in the 
United States, 2011: The Third FTC Survey--was released in April 2013 
and can be found at https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/consumer-fraud-united-states-2011-third-ftc-survey/130419fraudsurvey_0.pdf.\2\
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    \2\ Each survey was conducted under OMB Control Number 3084-
0125. The first consumer fraud survey was conducted in May and June 
of 2003. The results of that survey are reported in ``Consumer Fraud 
in the United States: An FTC Survey'' (https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/consumer-fraud-united-states-ftc-survey/040805confraudrpt.pdf). The 2005 survey was conducted in 
November and December of 2005 and the findings of that survey are 
reported in ``Consumer Fraud in the United States: The Second FTC 
Survey,'' (https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/consumer-fraud-united-states-second-federal-trade-commission-survey-staff-report-federal-trade/fraud.pdf).
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    The 2011 survey asked about consumers' experiences with 15 specific 
and two more general types of fraud during the previous year. Among 
frauds covered by the survey were the purchase of a weight-loss product 
that did not work as promised, paying money or making a required 
purchase to obtain a promised prize or lottery winnings that had never 
been received, and being billed for a buyers' club membership that a 
person had not agreed to purchase. Based on the survey results, during 
2011, 25.6 million U.S. adults--10.8 percent of the U.S. adult 
population--were victims of one or more of the frauds covered by the 
survey.
    Among the 15 specific frauds included in the survey, the most 
frequently reported was the purchase of a weight-loss product that the 
seller falsely represented would allow the user to lose a substantial 
amount of weight easily or lose the weight without diet or exercise. 
The survey results suggested that during 2011 5.1 million consumers--
2.1 percent of the U.S. adult population--had tried such a product and 
found that they only lost a little of the weight they had expected to 
lose or failed to lose any weight at all.
    Description of the Collection of Information and Proposed Use: The 
FTC proposes to conduct a telephone survey of 3,700 randomly-selected 
consumers nationwide age 18 and over--100 in a pretest and 3,600 in the 
main survey--in order to gather specific information on the incidence 
of consumer fraud in the general population. As before, in order 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 and African Americans--
the survey may oversample members of these groups. All information will 
be collected on a voluntary basis, and information on the identities of 
participants will not be collected. Subject to OMB approval for the 
survey,

[[Page 87937]]

the FTC plans to contract 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 the type or frequency of consumer fraud is changing. This 
information will inform the FTC about how best to combat consumer 
fraud.
    The FTC's proposed sample size is similar to that used in the 
previous surveys. Many of the questions will be similar to the 2005 and 
2011 surveys so that the results of the proposed survey can be compared 
to those from the earlier ones.\3\ The FTC may choose to conduct 
another follow-up survey in approximately five years.
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    \3\ The survey instrument for the 2011 Consumer Fraud Survey is 
included in the 2013 report as Appendix D.
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    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 20 minutes per 
participant on average and 33 hours as a whole (100 respondents x 20 
minutes each.). Answering the final survey will require approximately 
15 minutes per respondent on average and 900 hours as a whole (3,600 
respondents x 15 minutes each). Additionally, 100 interviews will be 
conducted with non-respondents--those who refused to participate or 
those with whom we did not have contact. These interviews will take 
approximately 5 minutes each, for a total burden of 8 hours. Thus, 
cumulative total burden will be approximately 941 hours.
    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.
    Analysis of Comments Received: As noted above, three comments were 
received in response to the March 31, 2016 Federal Register Notice. A 
comment from Douglas M. Brooks, dated June 13, 2016, suggested that the 
survey should be designed to ``reflect the incidence of fraud in 
vulnerable populations, including non-English speaking persons and 
undocumented residents.'' As in prior surveys, the proposed survey will 
be conducted in both English and Spanish. In addition, questions are 
being added to the survey to determine whether the person being 
interviewed has recently immigrated to the United States.
    A comment from Vin Dwyer, dated March 26, 2016, asked that the 
survey be structured to gather information about fraud that is the 
result of telemarketing calls to landline phones. As have prior 
surveys, the proposed survey will collect information about experiences 
of fraud that are promoted by a wide variety of communication methods, 
including landline telephone.
    A comment from William Keep, John Breyault, and Peter Vander Nat 
(``Keep et al.''), dated June 11, 2016, requested greater clarity about 
changes in the data regarding victims of pyramid schemes. The 
commenters noted that a change was made in the definition of who was 
counted as being a victim of a pyramid scheme between the first FTC 
fraud survey, which was conducted in 2003, and the second survey, 
conducted in 2005. As they noted, this change and a discussion of the 
impact on the resulting estimates was discussed in the 2007 report that 
described the findings of the second survey. However, this change was 
not noted in the subsequent report on the 2011 survey, and the 
commenters were concerned that someone who looked only at the first and 
third reports might miss the change. While it seems somewhat unlikely 
that someone reading any report from the currently proposed survey 
would simply compare those figures to the first survey, which was 
conducted more than a dozen years before the proposed one, the 
Commission will seek to make clear that changes have been made.
    Keep et al. also point out that a significant percentage of 
consumers only have cell phones and that it may be necessary to include 
calls to cell phones in conducting a telephone survey. Indeed, the 2011 
survey included cell phones in the sample design. Moreover, in the 
proposed survey, 70 percent of interview calls will be to consumers 
using cell phones.
    Keep et al. also express concern that some researchers who have 
used the information in the prior surveys have failed to note when 
differences between survey results are not statistically significant. 
When the FTC has made such comparisons, it has indicated whether the 
differences are significant or not and it will endeavor to do so for 
any future reports.
    Finally, Keep et al. express concern about the FTC's discontinuing, 
after the initial 2003 survey, to collect and report on whether victims 
of the frauds covered by the surveys have complained about their 
experiences. In fact, FTC staff have collected data on complaining 
behavior in each of the later surveys and will do so for the proposed 
survey. Unfortunately, FTC staff have not had sufficient time to 
analyze these data since the initial report but hope to do such an 
analysis in the future.
    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 January 5, 2017. Write ``Consumer Fraud Survey 2016: Paperwork 
Comment, FTC File 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 doesn't include any 
sensitive personal information, such as 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, such as 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 . . . privileged or confidential,'' as discussed 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 must follow the procedure explained in FTC Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 
4.9(c). Your comment will be kept confidential only if the FTC General 
Counsel grants your request in accordance with the law and the public 
interest.
    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, or to send them to the Commission by courier or 
overnight service. To make sure that the Commission considers your 
online comment, you must file it at https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/fraudsurvey2016, by following the instructions on the web-based 
form. If this Notice appears at http://www.regulations.gov/#!home, you 
also

[[Page 87938]]

may file a comment through that Web site.
    If you file your comment on paper, write ``Consumer Fraud Survey 
2016: Paperwork Comment, FTC File No. P105502'' on your comment and on 
the envelope, and mail it to the following address: Federal Trade 
Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Suite 
CC-5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC 20580, or deliver your comment to the 
following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 
Constitution Center, 400 7th Street SW., 5th Floor, Suite 5610 (Annex 
J), Washington, DC 20024. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    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) 395-5806.
    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 January 5, 
2017. For information on the Commission's privacy policy, including 
routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, see http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.htm.

David C. Shonka,
Acting General Counsel.
[FR Doc. 2016-29149 Filed 12-5-16; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 6750-01-P