FTC Obtains $195M Judgment and Ban on Simple Health for Sham Insurance Offering
ftc.gov
ftc.gov
> Defendants also used a “verification rebuttal” script that instructed employees to provide different and conflicting answers to consumers’ common questions depending on whether the verification was recorded or not. Id. ¶ 14(d). One “on recording” rebuttal stated that Defendants’ products “are not [h]ealth [i]insurance,” and the corresponding “off recording” rebuttal stated “[t]his is health insurance.”
then you should not be at all surprised when you get sued into oblivion.
There are reasons as to why, but basically all of my business interactions one way or another are recorded.
My Android (Pixel) records just fine.
In the UK, despite that it's legal for individuals to record their own calls without any consent or notification to the other party, these foreign companies have decided that it's either illegal, or that we're just now allowed to use it, and the features are disabled.
The built-in options are therefore unavailable, and Google seems to have gone on a crusade to make sure these apps in the Play Store are nerfed or removed. APIs that apps could use to provide this functionality have been removed and the only option now is to use he accessibility APIs which involve manually installing apks, and dismissing scary warnings. I don't expect this will work for much longer.
Where's Stallman when you need him...
Busy on his crusade of 'perfection', and absolute refusal of using any smartphone cause some chip is closed source.
But the tincan and aluminum foil helmet network is completely open /sigh
We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good.
Sometimes I share this sentiment, but sometimes I think that its foolish to try to build on top of a rotten foundation. You might be able to build what looks like a livable house on top of a rotten foundation, and those who object will have this charge leveled at them. And it will seem reasonable, precisely up to the moment the foundation fails and the house catastrophically falls apart.
The closed chips, closed microcode, closed firmware layers are a rotten foundation that happens to support the modern internet well-enough to provide an illusion of solidity. Of course Stallman can object until he's blue in the face, it will take a demonstration, a real collapse, for people to really understand the problem. Lots of possibilities there, with everyone's favorite being a Sino-US war over Taiwan with a heavy cyber component which targets these components, particularly power infrastructure, and the US realizes it no longer has the capacity to recover from such a blow, and such capacity was lost 2 generations of engineers ago. Mere argument becomes irrelevant at that point, because Nature doesn't care about argument, She only cares about Survival.
This is false. Finland is part of the EU and recording conversations in Finland only requires one-party consent.
False. A business might be required to inform you that they are recording, but many EU member states have one-party consent laws otherwise. For instance, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Denmark, Netherlands, Poland and Italy.
What I don't understand is why they removed the API for it, as it seems very unlikely they would be held responsable for users sideloading call recording apps in places where it's not legal. Nearly every Windows, Mac and Linux desktop/laptop can use OBS or dozens of other apps to record calls through Slack, Discord, Teams, Skype, or any other VoIP app, regardless of the legality of the action in your local area. As far as I'm aware, Microsoft, Apple and various Linux distros have never been sued for that (or even OBS and other apps.)
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of everything I've ever said in a phone call potentially being recorded. However, I'd much rather my in-person conversations not be recorded than what I say in phone calls, but no device takes any measures to prevent that: anyone can just start their audio recording app on their phone, turn their screen brightness down and then put it on the table (where my voice will be easily picked up) without me knowing it's recording. That happens to be legal in my State, but it can be done regardless of legality anywhere on any Android or iOS phone.
I'm lucky enough that I've never been threatened over the phone. Cheap products aside, I've also never been scammed. I've also never had an employer, coworker, politician or government worker that I know commit a crime and discuss it over the phone to me. However, I don't think we should inhibit victims of abuse, scams, people receiving threats, whistleblowers, or other witnesses to crime from sharing that evidence in a court of law (or with the public in my opinion — if someone threatens me, I think I deserve the right to let the public know that.)
However, if phone calls were recorded by default on most devices, while it would help keep certain companies more accountable towards their users, I think for other crimes (such as violent threats) it'd just shift them to be in-person, which could be more dangerous. By the default being off, people who are victims of or witnesses of crime might get a chance to call record without the perpetrator knowing. What I find very frustrating though is that Google and Apple prohibit you from recording calls without rooting, jailbreaking or using an external device. I'm not asking for it to be the default, I'm just asking for the freedom to do so, even if it requires 3rd party software to achieve.
It's particularly interesting on Android 14 because apps could in theory use Accessibility Service to record phone calls, but Google prohibits apps from doing so on the Play Store. You should be able to just sideload them then, right? Nope, as of Android 14, side-loaded apps are unable to activate Accessibility Service at all. There are workarounds depending on the device, but in any case you're limited to recording from microphone or loud speaker (can't use wired or Bluetooth headphones.)
Yes, there are also federal indictments for fraud:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/roofing-scams-florida-p...
FTC Motion for Summary Judgement: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/SimpleHealthSJO...
DoJ Prosecution: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdil/pr/jury-convicts-telemarke... ("Jury Convicts Telemarketing Company Owner/CEO and Another Executive of Federal Fraud Charges for Health Insurance Policy Scheme")
This took me about 2 minutes to parse.