The Federal Trade Commission has taken aim at restrictive labor practices, ordering Gateway Services, the nation’s largest pet cremation company, to end its use of noncompete agreements that bound nearly 1,800 workers across the United States.
France’s data protection watchdog has once again flexed its regulatory muscle, imposing large fines on two global giants, Google and Shein, for failing to comply with rules governing the use of cookies and online advertising practices. The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL) announced on September 1 that it had fined Google €325 million ($357 million) and Shein €150 million ($165 million), underscoring its determination to rein in non-compliant tracking practices under its long-running enforcement plan.
The operators of Pornhub and a network of more than 100 adult websites are facing legal action from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the state of Utah, accused of deceiving consumers while profiting from some of the internet’s most exploitative content.
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has fined Houston-based freight forwarder Fracht $1,610,775 after finding the company violated multiple sanctions programs tied to Venezuela and Iran. Regulators said the violations were egregious and not voluntarily self-disclosed, though Fracht ultimately cooperated and has since overhauled its compliance program.
South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) has imposed one of the country’s largest-ever privacy penalties on SK Telecom (SKT), ordering the mobile carrier to pay $99.9 million (KRW 134.8 billion) after a series of failures that exposed the personal information of more than 23 million subscribers.
Disney will pay $10 million to settle allegations from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it violated children’s online privacy protections by mislabeling YouTube videos, allowing the unlawful collection of personal data from under-13 viewers. The case not only imposes a financial penalty on one of the biggest names in entertainment but also signals a shift in how regulators expect companies to safeguard kids’ online experiences.
One of the biggest players in Australia’s futures market has been hit with a $2.55 million (AUD 3.88 million) penalty after failing to stop a wave of suspicious trading orders in the electricity and wheat futures market. The Market Disciplinary Panel (MDP) imposed the fine on SocGen, following an ASIC investigation that found the firm breached market integrity rules by permitting two clients to place 33 suspicious orders between May 2023 and February 2024.