Sears Petitions to Change Its 8-Year-Old FTC Privacy Settlement Order

On October 30, 2017, Sears Holding Management Corporation ("Sears") petitioned the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") to reopen and modify the settlement to which they agreed in 2009.  At that time, Sears agreed to a consent order to resolve the FTC's complaint that Sears allegedly did not adequately disclose the scope of its collection of "online browsing" data collected from users of Sears' desktop software application.  This landmark enforcement action was one of the FTC's first uses of its section 5 authority to regulate privacy-related disclosures and the tracking of users' online activity.

With Sears' petition, a company under a privacy-related consent order has for the first time asked the FTC to scale back the breadth of the order's applicability because of changes in technology, consumer expectations, and the marketplace.