A proposed settlement between the Federal Trade Commission and Sears Holdings Corp. could portend a new wave of enforcement actions against companies that deceptively collect consumer information.
The settlement raps Sears Holdings—which owns both Sears and K-Mart—for enticing visitors to the stores’ Websites to enroll in a special “My SHC Community” program where they downloaded software onto their computers that tracked their online browsing. Only after consumers completed a multi-step registration process did Sears disclose in a lengthy user license agreement the full extent of the information the software tracked, according to the FTC’s complaint.
