Panel Backs Bill Targeting Misleading Online Tactics

The Senate Commerce Committee approved three bills June 9 aimed at curbing texting and cell phone use while driving, loud television commercials and misleading online marketing tactics.

The bills include legislation offered by Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller (D-WV) that would bar companies from automatically passing a consumer's credit or debit card information to a third-party online partner and also require such third-party merchants to clearly disclose the terms of their offers to consumers. The bill emerged out of the committee's investigation of a practice known as data-pass marketing. The committee's probe focused on firms that misleadingly get consumers to sign up for discount membership clubs and other services as part of other online transactions with online retail sites, which pass on consumer credit and debit card information to these third-party firms. The committee also approved legislation, introduced by Sen Rockefeller, that aims to crack down on drivers who text or use their cell phones while driving. The bill would create a grant program for states that enact laws to prohibit texting and hand-held cell phone use while driving. "I think it is most appropriate for the states to handle this issue and devise laws that best meet their particular needs," Commerce ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who cosponsored the bill, said.