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April 10, 2020<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Carol McKay, carolm@nclnet.org, (412) 945-3242\u00a0or Taun Sterling, tauns@nclnet.org, (202)\u00a0207-2832<\/p>\n
Washington, DC \u2013 April 10, 2020 \u2013 The National Consumers League (NCL), in partnership with 42 patient and provider advocacy, public health, industry, and research groups, has issued joint letters<\/a> to Vice President Mike Pence, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other state and federal leaders calling for swift action to protect consumers against COVID-19 misinformation, scams, and fraud online.<\/p>\n \u201cNCL commends the White House Coronavirus Task Force and other officials for their dedication in responding to the coronavirus crisis,\u201d said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg. \u201cThe COVID-19 pandemic makes your work against healthcare and financial fraud more important now than ever. However to further flatten the curve and save lives, we urge the Administration to quickly implement increased evidence-based actions and to help protect consumers from predatory attempts to take advantage of our new economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the start of the pandemic, criminals launched thousands of COVID-specific global scams and phishing attacks, using the coronavirus crisis to profit at patients\u2019 expense. \u201cCriminals have exploited the fear and confusion caused by the coronavirus for their own personal profits. More must be done to mitigate the health and financial harms experienced by consumers nationwide,\u201d said Greenberg. In the past few weeks alone, more than 100,000 website domain names have been registered containing terms like \u201ccovid,\u201d and \u201ccorona,\u201d most of which have been found to be outright dangerous<\/a>. The Federal Trade Commission indicated<\/a> receipt of nearly 14,000 coronavirus-related complaints totaling fraudulent losses nearly $10 million.<\/p>\n NCL has long called for increased regulation and enforcement against illegal online acts that result in public health and economic harm. The joint letter encourages the Administration to move swiftly to enact and enforce existing no-cost solutions to better protect consumers. Additionally, it calls on the Administration to \u00a0ground their efforts in science, address systemic internet policy problems and prepare for an ongoing wave of COVID-19 related scams during the economic downturn.<\/p>\n Co-signers of the letters include Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies, BIO, Coalition for a Safe and Transparent Internet, Consumer Brands Association, Kroll, Lilly, LegitScript, and USP. The full letter can be read here.<\/a><\/p>\n ###<\/p>\n About the National Consumers League<\/strong><\/p>\n The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneering consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 10, 2020 Contact: National Consumers League \u2013 Carol McKay, carolm@nclnet.org, (412) 945-3242\u00a0or Taun Sterling, tauns@nclnet.org, (202)\u00a0207-2832 Washington, DC \u2013 April 10, 2020 \u2013 The National Consumers League (NCL), in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false},"categories":[285,14,420,415,269,15,267,282,266,268,270,281],"tags":[316],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3347"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16922,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3347\/revisions\/16922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nclnet.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}