{"id":25457,"date":"2024-11-13T15:10:09","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T23:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/news-19187\/"},"modified":"2024-11-13T15:10:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T23:10:09","slug":"news-19187","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/news-19187\/","title":{"rendered":"Temu must respect consumer protection laws, says EU"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Temu has been accused of a number of infringements on its platform against European Union (EU) consumer law.<\/p>\n<p>The Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network of national consumer authorities and the European Commission teamed up for a coordinated ongoing investigation into Temu and its practices. The investigation covers a range of misleading and \u201cunduly influences\u201d on consumers&#8217; purchasing decisions, and looks at the information obligations that need to be met by an online marketplace.<\/p>\n<p>The CPC Network is made up of the national consumer authorities of the 27 EU Member States, Norway, and Iceland.<\/p>\n<p>The problems the investigation found cover almost every aspect of misleading advertising one can think of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Fake discounts<\/strong>. Telling buyers that items are offered with a discount when in reality the price is the same or even higher than before.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Pressure selling<\/strong>. Claiming that items are in short supply or need to be purchased before a deadline.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Forced gamification<\/strong>. Forcing consumers to play \u201cspin the fortune wheel\u201d before accessing the platform without making them aware of the conditions attached to the use of claiming the rewards in the game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Missing and misleading information<\/strong>. Giving incomplete and even incorrect information about consumers&#8217; legal rights to return goods and receive refunds. Temu also fails to tell customers up front that they need to reach a minimum value before they can complete their purchase.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fake reviews<\/strong>. Hosting suspected unauthentic reviews, and providing inadequate information about how Temu ensures the authenticity of reviews published on its website.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Hidden contact details<\/strong>. Deliberately making it hard for customers to contact Temu for questions and complaints.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The CPC Network made objections to the fact that Temu does not provide information on whether the seller is a trader or not, and would also like to ensure that any environmental claims are accurate and substantiated.<\/p>\n<p>Temu has one month to reply with a proposal to address the identified issues. Should the company fail to do so, national authorities can take enforcement measures to ensure compliance. These measures can be fines based on Temu&#8217;s annual turnover in the Member States concerned.<\/p>\n<p>Temu responded:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cAlthough we have gained popularity with many consumers in a relatively short time, we are still a very young platform \u2014 less than two years in the EU \u2014 and are actively learning and adapting to local requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>This is not the only problem Temu is facing at the moment. In June, we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2024\/06\/temu-sued-for-being-dangerous-malware-by-arkansas-attorney-general\">reported<\/a> that the\u00a0Chinese online shopping giant is facing a lawsuit filed by the State of Arkansas Attorney General, alleging that the retailer\u2019s mobile app spies on users.<\/p>\n<p>In September, a cybercriminal claimed to be selling a stolen database containing 87 million records of customer information. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bleepingcomputer.com\/news\/security\/temu-denies-breach-after-hacker-claims-theft-of-87-million-data-records\/\">Temu denied it suffered a data breach<\/a>, a statement supported by other circumstances, but these claims have a tendency to linger on.<\/p>\n<p>And back in February, the trade association Toy Industries of Europe released a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.toyindustries.eu\/95-of-toys-bought-from-new-online-platform-break-eu-safety-rules\/\">report<\/a> warning that none of the 19 toys it bought on Temu.com complied with EU legislation. After sending the toys to a laboratory for testing, the organization claimed that many of them posed significant risks for children.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background is-style-wide\" \/>\n<p><strong>We don\u2019t just report on threats\u2014we remove them<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your devices by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/for-home\">downloading Malwarebytes today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2024\/11\/temu-must-respect-consumer-protection-laws-says-eu\" target=\"bwo\" >https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Temu is under investigation for a variety of misleading practices. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[28478,17348,32,28930],"class_list":["post-25457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-cpc","tag-misleading","tag-news","tag-temu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}