Overview

• FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson sent letters on Aug. 21 to 13 firms, including Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Akamai, Cloudflare, Discord, GoDaddy, Signal, Snap, Slack and X.
• The letters caution that yielding to the EU Digital Services Act, the U.K. Online Safety Act or the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act could pressure companies into policies that undermine protections promised to U.S. users.
• Ferguson warned that weakening end-to-end encryption or censoring Americans to simplify global compliance may constitute unfair or deceptive practices that harm consumers through surveillance, identity theft and fraud.
• Companies were reminded that foreign statutes do not excuse violations of U.S. consumer-protection duties and that the FTC stands ready to enforce those obligations.
• Ferguson invited recipients to schedule meetings by Aug. 28, and the warning follows U.S. officials' announcement this week that the U.K. dropped a demand for Apple to provide backdoor access to encrypted iCloud data.