Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request; Extension

<NOTICE> FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION <SUBJECT>Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request; Extension</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Trade Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”) is seeking public comment on its proposal to extend for an additional three years the Office of Management and Budget clearance for information collection requirements of its Affiliate Marketing Rule, which applies to certain motor vehicle dealers, and its shared enforcement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) of the provisions (subpart C) of the CFPB's Regulation V regarding other entities (“CFPB Rule”). The current clearance expires on April 30, 2026. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before February 23, 2026. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested parties may file a comment online or on paper by following the instructions in the Request for Comments part of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section below. Write “Paperwork Reduction Act Comment: FTC File No. P072108” on your comment, and file your comment online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> by following the instructions on the web-based form. If you prefer to file your comment on paper, mail your comment to the following address: Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Suite CC-5610 (Annex J), Washington, DC 20580. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> David Walko, Attorney, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20580, (202) 326-2880. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Title:</E> Affiliate Marketing Rule (16 CFR part 680). <E T="03">OMB Control Number:</E> 3084-0131. <E T="03">Type of Review:</E> Extension of currently approved collection. <E T="03">Affected Public:</E> Businesses and other for-profit entities. <E T="03">Estimated Annual Burden Hours:</E> 7,880. <E T="03">Estimated Annual Labor Costs:</E> $429,838. <E T="03">Estimated Annual Non-Labor Costs:</E> <E T="03">de minimis.</E> <E T="03">Abstract:</E> As required by section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A), the FTC is providing this opportunity for public comment before requesting that the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) extend the existing clearance for the information collection requirements contained in the Affiliate Marketing Rule. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank Act”) was enacted on July 21, 2010. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Dodd-Frank Act transferred to the CFPB most of the FTC's rulemaking authority for the Affiliate Marketing provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The FTC retained rulemaking authority for its Affiliate Marketing Rule (16 CFR part 680) solely for motor vehicle dealers described in section 1029(a) of the Dodd-Frank Act as predominantly engaged in the sale and servicing of motor vehicles, the leasing and servicing of motor vehicles, or both. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Additionally, the FTC shares enforcement authority with the CFPB and other agencies for provisions of Regulation V subpart C (12 CFR 1022.20-1022.27) that apply to entities other than those specified above. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Public Law 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376 (2010). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  15 U.S.C. 1681 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Dodd-Frank Act sec. 1029(a), (c). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  While the FTC shares enforcement authority with the Federal Reserve System, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, National Credit Union Administration, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for the CFPB's counterpart affiliate sharing rule, Regulation V (Subpart C), 12 CFR 1022.20-1220.27, the CFPB has assumed 95% of the burden associated with its affiliate sharing rule. <E T="03">See</E> Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, <E T="03">Agency Information Collection Activities: Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request,</E> 85 FR 52559 (Aug. 26, 2020); CFPB Supporting Statement, <E T="03">Fair Credit Reporting Act (Regulation V) 12 CFR 1022,</E> OMB Control Number: 3170-0002 (2020). In addition, the CFPB has estimated that the burden associated with Regulation V's affiliate sharing provisions is <E T="03">de minimis.</E> </FTNT> As mandated by section 214 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (“FACT Act”), Public Law 108-159 (Dec. 6, 2003), the Affiliate Marketing Rule (“Rule”) requires covered entities to provide consumers with notice and an opportunity to opt out of the use of certain information before sending marketing solicitations. The Rule generally provides that, if a company communicates certain information about a consumer (eligibility information) to an affiliate, the affiliate may not use it to make or send solicitations to the consumer unless the consumer is given notice and a reasonable opportunity to opt out of such use of the information and does not opt out. To minimize compliance costs and burdens for entities, particularly any small businesses that may be affected, the Rule contains model disclosures and opt-out notices that may be used to satisfy the statutory requirements. The Rule also gives covered entities flexibility to satisfy the notice and opt-out requirement. Covered entities may send the consumer a free-standing opt-out notice to satisfy the Rule's requirements or add the opt-out notice to privacy notices already provided to consumers, such as those provided in accordance with the provisions of Title V, subtitle A of the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (“GLBA”). <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> As a result, the time necessary to prepare or incorporate an opt-out notice is likely to be minimal because covered entities may either use the model disclosure verbatim or base their own disclosures upon it. Moreover, verbatim adoption of the model notice does not constitute a PRA “collection of information.”  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The Rule also provides that affiliated companies may send a joint disclosure to consumers, thereby eliminating the need for each affiliate to send a separate disclosure. Staff anticipates that affiliated entities will choose to send a joint notice, which will reduce the number of notices required under the Rule. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  15 U.S.C. 6801 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  “The public disclosure of information originally supplied by the Federal government to the recipient for purpose of disclosure to the public is not included within [the definition of collection of information].” 5 CFR 1320.3(c)(2). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Burden Statement</HD> Under the PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521, the FTC is requesting that OMB renew the clearance (OMB Control Number 3084-0131) for the information collection burden associated with the Rule. Staff estimates that there are approximately 47,057 franchise/new car and independent/used car dealers in the U.S. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Applying an estimated rate of affiliation of 16.75%, staff estimates that there are approximately 7,882 motor vehicle dealerships in affiliated families that may be subject to the Rule's affiliate sharing obligations. Staff further estimates an average of five businesses per family or affiliated relationship, and anticipates that affiliated entities will choose to send a joint notice as permitted by the Rule. Therefore, staff estimates that approximately 1,576 covered motor vehicle business families would be subject to the Rule. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Notice of Paperwork Reduction Act Clearance for Information Collection Requirements in the Used Motor Vehicle Trade Regulation Rule, 90 FR 56147, 56147 (Dec. 5, 2025). (This figure is based on estimates made by the U.S. Census Bureau. See 2023 U.S. Census Bureau Data, showing 25,147 establishments for “used car dealers,” NAICS code 44112 and 21,910 “new car dealers,” NAICS code 44111, <E T="03">available at https://data.census.gov/profile/44112_-_Used_Car_Dealers?codeset=naics~44112&g=010XX00US</E> and <E T="03">https://data.census.gov/profile/44111_-_New_car_dealers?codeset=naics~44111&g=010XX00US</E> .) </FTNT> Staff assumes that all or nearly all motor vehicles subject to the Rule's provisions are also subject to the Commission's Privacy of Consumer Financial Information Rule under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (16 CFR part 313) (“Privacy Rule”). Entities that are subject to the Commission's GLBA Privacy Rule already provide privacy notices to their customers. Absent an exception, financial institutions must provide an initial privacy notice at the time the customer relationship is established and then annually so long as the relationship continues. 15 U.S.C. 6803. Staff's estimates assume that in all or nearly all cases covered institutions will choose to incorporate the affiliate marketing opt-out notice into the initial and annual GLBA privacy notices. In 2015, Congress, as part of the FAST Act, amended the GLBA to provide an exception under which financial institutions that meet certain conditions are not required to provide annual notices to customers. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> Staff seeks comment on how the use of this exception by institutions that are required to provide an affiliate marketing notice will impact the burden estimates for these entities. Institutions that claim the FAST Act exemption and forego sending required annual privacy notices in some years will nonetheless ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━