FTC Closes Investigation Into Router Security Of Wireless Communications Provider

On November 12, the FTC published a letter announcing that it was closing its investigation of a wireless communications provider's alleged violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act for failing to reasonably secure routers for its consumers. The FTC's letter explained that despite the fact that the company regularly shipped customers routers with an outdated default encryption standard (Wired Equivalent Privacy), the company maintained reasonable overall data security practices related to its routers and took steps to mitigate the risk to consumers' information such as changing the default setting on routers in distribution centers and implementing an outreach campaign to ask customers to update their security settings.