A Report by U.S. PIRG Education Fund
Written by Tano Toussaint and Adam Garber, U.S. PIRG Education Fund
Over the past 30 years, our annual reports have led to more than 150 recalls of unsafe toys and other regulatory actions. This year we continued to find dangers among some of the most popular toys in the country.
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1 Year After Equifax Data Breach, Here's Everything You Need To Know
One year after announcing the biggest data breach in history, Equifax still hasn't been held accountable or provided the information and tools consumers need to protect themselves. Since Equifax won't help protect consumers, MoPIRG is stepping in.
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U.S. PIRG response to reports of Facebook security breach
Facebook announced today that earlier this week, "attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook's code that impacted "View As", a feature that lets people see what their own profile looks like to someone else. This allowed them to steal Facebook access tokens which they could then use to take over people's accounts."
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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Public Health, Consumer Protection, Health Care
Second recall of King Bio's homeopathic drugs in the past month
King Bio Inc. issued the second significant voluntary recall since late July of their homeopathic drugs on Wednesday. Safety concerns over homeopathic drugs extend beyond King Bio as over the past several years, the FDA has issued recalls to several companies for a variety of health products from zinc-containing intranasal medicine to asthma drugs with toxic ingredients.
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ID Theft & Privacy Checklists
Today, we're releasing our revamped Identity Theft and Online Privacy resources.
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Congress Affirms Need to Stop Debt Trap; Mick Mulvaney Should Follow Suit
Here is our statement on Congress allowing the deadline to pass without repealing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's payday lending rule.
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Group Letter To FTC: Is Facebook In Violation of 2011 Privacy Order?
Recent news stories about Facebook's sharing of consumer information with data broker Cambridge Analytica raise a question: Is Facebook in violation of a 2011 privacy order with the Federal Trade Commission? We join leading groups in a letter to the FTC.
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U.S. PIRG Senate Floor Letter Opposing Bank Deregulation Bill S2155
This week, the Senate will consider S2155 on the floor. The bi-partisan bill led by Mike Crapo (ID) and Mark Warner (VA) rolls back big bank safety and soundness rules and exempts 85% of all banks from compliance with laws protecting consumers from mortgage fraud, racial discrimination and other consumer protections. In an effort to supposedly balance the bill's deregulatory bent, it includes a weak free credit freeze provision that preempts stronger state law efforts.
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Letter Opposing S2155 In Senate Banking Committee
Tomorrow the Senate Banking Committee will begin and likely complete a markup vote of S2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. Our opposition letter is attached and available for download. While the bill does not take a bludgeon to consumer protection, as the Financial Choice Act passed by the full House does, it does dramatically reduce protections for consumers in the mortgage marketplace while eliminating prudential safeguards applicable to many super-regional banks. Banks of that size were prominent in the financial crisis of 2008.
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Trouble in Toyland 2017
For over 30 years, U.S. PIRG Education Fund has conducted an annual survey of toy safety, which has led to over 150 recalls and other regulatory actions over the years, and has helped educate the public and policymakers on the need for continued action to protect the health and wellbeing of children.
Toys are safer than ever before, thanks to decades of work by product safety advocates, parents, the leadership of Congress, state legislatures, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Among the toys surveyed this year, we found potential choking hazards, and two products with concentrations of lead exceeding federal standards for children's products. We also found data-collecting toys that may violate children's privacy laws. This report not only lists the potentially dangerous toys that we found this year, but also describes why and how the toys could harm children. The continued presence of hazards in toys highlights the need for constant vigilance on the part of government agencies and the public to ensure that unsafe toys do not harm children.
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