What You Need to Know

Here's what you need to know before submitting your complaint:

How Your Information Will Be Handled

The information contained in your complaint will be entered into Consumer Sentinel, a consumer complaint database maintained by the U. S. Federal Trade Commission. Your complaint will be accessible to certified government law enforcement and regulatory agencies in ICPEN-member countries. Government agencies may use this information to investigate suspect companies and individuals, uncover new scams, and spot trends in fraud.

Information submitted through the online complaint form may also be used in aggregate form to analyze trends and statistics, that may be released to the public. This aggregate information will not contain your personal identifying information. The econsumer.gov complaint database is hosted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Please read the FTC's privacy policy.

What to Expect Next

You should not necessarily expect any country to pursue your complaint on your behalf. Although your complaint may be accessible to government agencies, it may or may not be accessed by them. Many government agencies bring law enforcement actions to protect the public-at-large, but do not intervene on behalf of individual consumers. Other agencies have an obligation to investigate each complaint.

Because the Internet marketplace is a borderless one, sharing your complaint with government agencies in different countries will help keep the Internet safe. It will also help prevent others from experiencing the problem you did.

Tips

• If your complaint is not against a foreign company, we recommend you contact a consumer protection agency in your country.
• If you have submitted a complaint via the online complaint form and it has been entered into our complaint database, you can access it to update or correct it by contacting us and identifying your complaint by its reference number.
• The more information you can provide, the more useful your complaint will be.