CDD and U.S. PIRG Education Fund Call on CFPB & other Financial Regulators to Regulate the use of Social Media in Consumer Financial Services

CDD and U.S. PIRG Education Fund filed comments yesterday with the FFIEC (link is external), the federal body which develops policies for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve, FDIC, etc. We called for a set of strong safeguards to protect consumers from largely opaque and unfair social media marketing practices used in the financial marketplace. It especially called for regulation with the growing use of predictive “scoring (link is external)” products that evaluate how a financial service can view the creditworthiness of a consumer. The filing also called for an investigation into how Facebook’s marketing appartus is used in the consumer financial marketplace, and the need to closely scrutinize the growing role of mobile devices.