Lawrence Walters Comments on FTC Investigation into Misuse of Online Profiles

Xbiz.com asked adult entertainment industry attorney, Lawrence Walters, for his reaction to the FTC probe of jerk.com, relating to the company’s alleged misuse of online profiles scraped from other sites:

Adult industry attorney Lawrence Walters of Walters Law Group said he wasn’t surprised of the charges levied against Jerk.com’s operators because he’s noticed that the FTC is becoming much more active in pursuing deceptive trade practices claims against social-networking website operators.

This week’s Jerk.com complaint only confirms that the FTC is focused on enforcing policies and federal law designed to stop consumers from being cheated, he said.

“The alleged violations by Jerk.com are reminiscent of the ‘revenge porn’ scam, where nude photos are posted with identifying information, but can be removed for a fee,” Walters told XBIZ. “This is just a new take on the old extortion racket, and the authorities have wised up to the practice.”

Walters said that he’s aware that the FTC is looking closely at the misuse of profiles on social-networking sites, in general, because the FTC announced its belief that practice of creating fake, host-generated, or “virtual” user profiles on dating sites is deceptive and unfair.

“So dating sites — whether mainstream or adult — have been put on notice of the FTC’s view of this business practice,” Walters said. “The key to any of these trade practices issues is disclosure, and the more transparent the website operator is in telling the customer how it operates, the less likely it will attract the attention of the FTC. A problem results when social networking sites use, or misuse, profiles in a way that misleads users as to their true nature without conspicuous disclosure.

“While the allegations against Jerk.com appear to involve a fairly obvious scam, the legal issues with dating site profiles are less clear. Since some dating sites share profiles, license profiles, and generate their own profiles, extreme care should be taken to become aware of the FTC’s policies, rulings and positions regarding the legality of these practices.”