[Federal Register Volume 84, Number 211 (Thursday, October 31, 2019)]
[Notices]
[Pages 58386-58388]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2019-23809]


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FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

[File No. 172 3118]


Retina-X Studios, LLC; Analysis To Aid Public Comment

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission.

ACTION: Proposed consent agreement; request for comment.

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SUMMARY: The consent agreement in this matter settles alleged 
violations of federal law prohibiting unfair or deceptive acts or 
practices. The attached Analysis to Aid Public Comment describes both 
the allegations in the complaint and the terms of the consent order--
embodied in the consent agreement--that would settle these allegations.

DATES:  Comments must be received on or before December 2, 2019.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may file comments online or on paper, by 
following the instructions in the Request for Comment part of the 
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below. Write: ``Retina-X Studios, 
LLC; File No. 172 3118'' on your comment, and file your comment online 
at https://www.regulations.gov 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 D), 
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 D), Washington, DC 
20024.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jacqueline Connor (202-326-2844), 
Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, 600 
Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Pursuant to Section 6(f) of the Federal 
Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 46(f), and FTC Rule 2.34, 16 CFR 2.34, 
notice is hereby given that the above-captioned consent agreement 
containing a consent order to cease and desist, having been filed with 
and accepted, subject to final approval, by the Commission, has been 
placed on the public record for a period of thirty (30) days. The 
following Analysis to Aid Public Comment describes the terms of the 
consent agreement and the allegations in the complaint. An electronic 
copy of the full text of the consent agreement package can be obtained 
from the FTC Home Page (for October 22, 2019), on the World Wide Web, 
at https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/commission-actions.
    You can file a comment online or on paper. For the Commission to 
consider your comment, we must receive it on or before December 2, 
2019. Write ``Retina-X Studios, LLC; File No. 172 3118'' 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 https://www.regulations.gov website.
    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 through the https://www.regulations.gov website.
    If you prefer to file your comment on paper, write ``Retina-X 
Studios, LLC; File No. 172 3118'' on your comment and on the envelope, 
and mail your comment to the following address: Federal Trade 
Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite 
CC-5610 (Annex D), 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 
D), Washington, DC 20024. If possible, submit your paper comment to the 
Commission by courier or overnight service.
    Because your comment will be placed on the publicly accessible 
website at https://www.regulations.gov, you are solely responsible for 
making sure that your comment does not include any sensitive or 
confidential information. In particular, your comment should not 
include any sensitive personal information, such as your or anyone 
else'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, your comment should not include any ``trade secret or any 
commercial or financial information which . . . is privileged or 
confidential''--as provided by Section

[[Page 58387]]

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)--including in particular competitively sensitive information 
such as costs, sales statistics, inventories, formulas, patterns, 
devices, manufacturing processes, or customer names.
    Comments containing material for which confidential treatment is 
requested must be filed in paper form, must be clearly labeled 
``Confidential,'' and must comply with FTC Rule 4.9(c). 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). Your comment will be kept 
confidential only if the General Counsel grants your request in 
accordance with the law and the public interest. Once your comment has 
been posted on the public FTC website--as legally required by FTC Rule 
4.9(b)--we cannot redact or remove your comment from the FTC website, 
unless you submit a confidentiality request that meets the requirements 
for such treatment under FTC Rule 4.9(c), and the General Counsel 
grants that request.
    Visit the FTC website 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 December 2, 2019. For information on the 
Commission's privacy policy, including routine uses permitted by the 
Privacy Act, see https://www.ftc.gov/site-information/privacy-policy.

Analysis of Proposed Consent Order To Aid Public Comment

    The Federal Trade Commission (``Commission'') has accepted, subject 
to final approval, an agreement containing a consent order from Retina-
X Studios, LLC (``Retina-X'') and individual Respondent James N. Johns, 
Jr. (collectively, ``Respondents'').
    The proposed consent order (``proposed order'') has been placed on 
the public record for thirty (30) days for receipt of comments by 
interested persons. Comments received during this period will become 
part of the public record. After thirty (30) days, the Commission again 
will review the agreement and the comments received, and will decide 
whether it should withdraw from the agreement or make final the 
agreement's proposed order.
    From 2007 to 2018 Retina-X developed and sold various products and 
services, each with the means to allow a purchaser to monitor, often 
surreptitiously, another person's activities on that person's mobile 
device. James N. Johns, Jr. is the registered agent and sole member of 
Retina-X. Individually or in concert with others, Mr. Johns controlled 
or had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and 
practices alleged in the proposed complaint.
    Respondents' mobile device monitoring products and services 
included MobileSpy, PhoneSheriff, and TeenShield. These monitoring 
products and services had varying capabilities and costs. Purchasers 
were often required to jailbreak or root (i.e., actions to bypass 
various restrictions implemented by the operating system on and/or the 
manufacturer of mobile devices) the device user's mobile device prior 
to installing Respondents' monitoring products and services. 
Jailbreaking or rooting a mobile device exposes a mobile device to 
various security vulnerabilities and likely invalidates any warranty 
that a mobile device manufacturer or carrier provides.
    All of Respondents' monitoring products and services required that 
the purchaser have physical access to the device user's mobile device, 
and could remotely monitor the device user's activities from an online 
dashboard. By default, Respondents' monitoring products and services 
disclosed to the device user that they were being monitored (e.g., an 
icon on a monitored mobile device). However, purchasers could turn off 
this feature so that the monitoring products and services could run 
surreptitiously, meaning that the device user was unaware that he or 
she was being monitored. Respondents provided purchasers with 
instructions on how to remove the icon that would confirm that 
monitoring products and services were installed on a particular mobile 
device.
    Device users surreptitiously monitored by Respondents' monitoring 
products and services could not uninstall or remove Respondents' 
monitoring products and services because they did not know that they 
were being monitored. Device users often had no way of knowing that 
Respondents' monitoring products and services were being used on their 
phone. Respondents did not take any steps to ensure that purchasers 
would use Respondents' monitoring products and services for legitimate 
purposes, such as to monitor employees or children.
    Moreover, Respondents did not take steps to secure the personal 
information collected from purchasers and device users being monitored. 
Respondents outsourced most of their product development and 
maintenance to a service provider. Respondents engaged in a number of 
practices that, taken together, failed to provide reasonable data 
security to protect the personal information collected from consumers. 
As a result of these unreasonable data security practices, Respondents 
were breached twice.
    The Commission proposed 5-count complaint alleges that Respondents 
violated Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the 
Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule. The first count alleges that 
Respondents unfairly sold monitoring products and services that 
required jailbreaking or rooting, without taking reasonable steps to 
ensure that the monitoring products and services would only be used for 
legitimate and lawful purposes by the purchaser.
    The second to fourth counts allege that Respondents deceived 
consumers about Respondents' data security practices by falsely 
representing that consumers' personal information collected through 
MobileSpy, PhoneSheriff, and TeenShield, and stored in Respondents' 
databases was confidential, private, and safe. The fifth count alleges 
that Respondents violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule 
by failing to establish and maintain reasonable procedures to protect 
the confidentiality, security, and integrity of personal information 
collected from children through the TeenShield product. Respondents 
failed to implement appropriate security procedures to protect the 
personal information collected from consumers, including children, such 
as by: (1) Failing to adopt, implement, or maintain security standards, 
policies, procedures or practices; (2) failing to conduct security 
testing of mobile applications that could be exploited to gain 
unauthorized access to consumers' sensitive personal information for 
well-known and reasonably foreseeable vulnerabilities; (3) failing to 
contractually require their service providers to adopt and implement 
information security standards, policies, procedures or practices; (4) 
failing to perform adequate oversight of service providers; and (5) 
failing to adopt and implement written information security standards, 
policies, procedures, or practices that would apply to the oversight of 
their service providers.
    The proposed order contains provisions designed to prevent

[[Page 58388]]

Respondents from engaging in the same or similar acts or practices in 
the future.
    Part I of the proposed order prohibits Respondents from selling a 
monitoring product unless: (1) The monitoring product does not 
circumvent security protections implemented by the mobile device 
operating system or manufacturer; (2) prior to the sale of the 
monitoring product, express written attestation is obtained from the 
purchaser that the monitoring product stating that the monitoring 
product will be used for legitimate and lawful purposes; and (3) 
documentation is obtained proving that the purchaser is an authorized 
user on the monitored mobile device's service carrier account. The 
proposed order also requires that Respondents display an application 
icon, including the name of the monitoring product, when the monitoring 
product is on the mobile device. Moreover, a clear and conspicuous 
notice must be presented when the application icon is clicked.
    Part II of the order restrains Respondents from distributing 
monitoring products unless Respondents have: (1) A home page notice 
stating that the monitoring product may only be used for legitimate and 
lawful purposes by authorized users; and (2) a purchase page notice 
stating that the monitoring product may only be used for legitimate and 
lawful purposes by authorized users, and that installing or using the 
monitoring product for any other purpose may violate local, state, and/
or federal law.
    Part III of the proposed order prohibits Respondents from violating 
the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule. Part IV of the proposed 
order prohibits Respondents from misrepresenting the extent to which 
Respondents maintain and protect the privacy, security, 
confidentiality, or integrity of consumers' personal information. Part 
V requires that Respondents' delete all personal information collected 
from a monitoring product prior to entry of the proposed order within 
120 days.
    Part VI of the proposed order prohibits Respondents, and any 
business that a Respondent controls, directly, or indirectly, from 
transferring, selling, sharing, collecting, maintaining, or storing 
personal information unless Respondents establish and implement, and 
thereafter maintain, a comprehensive information security program that 
protects the security confidentiality, and integrity of such personal 
information. Part VII requires Respondents to obtain initial and 
biennial data security assessments for twenty years. Part VIII of the 
proposed order requires Respondents to disclose all material facts to 
the assessor and prohibits Respondents from misrepresenting any fact 
material to the assessments required by Part VII. Part IX requires 
Respondents to submit an annual certification from a senior corporate 
manager (or senior officer responsible for its information security 
program), that Respondents have implemented the requirements of the 
proposed order, are not aware of any material noncompliance that has 
not been corrected or disclosed to the Commission, and includes a brief 
description of any covered incident involving unauthorized access to or 
acquisition of personal information. Part X requires Respondents to 
submit a report to the Commission of their discovery of any covered 
incident.
    Parts XI through XIV of the proposed order are reporting and 
compliance provisions, which including recordkeeping requirements and 
provisions requiring Respondents to provide information or documents 
necessary for the Commission to monitor compliance. Part XV states that 
the proposed order will remain in effect for 20 years, with certain 
exceptions.
    The purpose of this analysis is to aid public comment on the 
proposed order. It is not intended to constitute an official 
interpretation of the complaint or proposed order, or to modify in any 
way the proposed order's terms.

    By direction of the Commission.
April J. Tabor,
Acting Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2019-23809 Filed 10-30-19; 8:45 am]
 BILLING CODE 6750-01-P