The FTC Already Banned Impersonating Your Business. Now It Is Asking Whether the Platform That Sold the Ad Should Pay Too.

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There has been a federal rule against impersonating your business since March 2024. It is short, it is blunt, and it binds the impersonator. It says nothing at all about the platform that took the money for the ad.

On 1 October the Federal Trade Commission opened a proceeding asking whether that should change. Comments close on 30 November 2026 — fifty-one days from today. There is no rule text to react to, no duty landing on your store, and nothing to put in your compliance calendar. What there is instead is unusual for this blog: a proceeding in which an independent eyewear seller is the injured party rather than the party being regulated, and in which the Commission has asked for exactly the kind of evidence a small store has and a large platform does not volunteer.

What the document is, precisely

It is an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking — an ANPRM. The Commission describes its own action as "Advance notice of proposed rulemaking ("ANPRM"); request for public comment."

  • Title: Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses
  • Citation: 91 FR 62347–62357
  • Published: 1 October 2026
  • Federal Register document number: 2026-20143
  • RIN: 3084-AB90
  • Matter No.: R207000
  • Comments close: "Comments must be received on or before November 30, 2026."

The summary paragraph, in the Commission's own words:

"The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC" or "Commission") proposes to commence a rulemaking proceeding to prevent certain unfair or deceptive acts or practices by search engine, social media, and other digital marketplace platforms that further government and business impersonation scams to defraud consumers. The Commission is soliciting written comment, data, and arguments concerning the need for such rulemaking."

Read that carefully. The Commission proposes to commence a proceeding. It is soliciting comment on the need for a rulemaking. There is no proposed regulatory text anywhere in the document. We looked for it; there is none to find.

One practical warning if you go looking for this yourself. The Federal Register's own metadata field for the document type reads "Proposed Rule", while the document's own action line says it is an ANPRM. Both of those are what the source says. If you search for a proposed rule and find a document with no rule in it, you have not found the wrong document.

The 2024 rule, and the provision the Commission dropped

The document's second section is headed "March 2024 Impersonation Rule and Proposed Means-and-Instrumentalities Provision", and the history it tells is the reason this ANPRM matters to you rather than to a compliance officer.

The existing rule is at 16 CFR part 461, published at 89 FR 15017 on 1 March 2024. The document describes what it does: it "prohibits the impersonation of government, businesses, and their officers or agents as unfair or deceptive acts or practices". The Commission notes, plainly, that "The Commission has already exercised its rulemaking authority to promulgate the Impersonation Rule."

Alongside that rule in 2024, the Commission floated something considerably broader — a means-and-instrumentalities provision. The proposed text, as the ANPRM quotes it in a footnote, began:

"It is a violation of this part, and an unfair or deceptive act or practice to provide goods or services with knowledge or reason to know that those goods or services will be used to:"

The list that completed that sentence is not reproduced here. What matters is the shape of it: a duty on anyone who supplies goods or services to an impersonator, with knowledge or reason to know. On its face that reaches a dropshipper, a fulfilment house, a web designer, a lens grinder. The Commission did not finalise it. The ANPRM records that it "has decided not to proceed with the SNPRM's proposed means and instrumentalities provision at this time."

It is now back, and narrowed. The Commission says it "begins its consideration of any such provision through this ANPRM, not an SNPRM." The difference between the 2024 version and what is being considered in 2026 is the difference between a rule that could have named your store as a defendant and a rule aimed at the advertising platforms. That is worth understanding before you decide whether to spend twenty minutes on a comment.

Who counts as a "Platform"

The document uses the capitalised term "Platforms" throughout, and explains it in a footnote:

"As used herein, Platforms are public-facing websites or apps on which third parties offer goods, services, or opportunities through paid advertisements or other listings."

Two honest observations about that sentence.

First, it is a usage note in a footnote of an advance notice. It is not a definition in a rule, because there is no rule. Nothing stops the Commission from defining the term differently, or not at all, if this ever becomes a proposal.

Second, read literally it is wider than "search engine and social media". The words "or other listings" do not require that anyone paid for the listing. A marketplace on which third parties offer goods would appear to sit inside it. The document does not say whether a hosted storefront, a marketplace, a comparison-shopping engine, or an affiliate network is inside or outside. If your business model involves third parties listing goods on a surface you control, that ambiguity is the single most useful thing you could write to the Commission about.

What the Commission is actually floating

The questions are grouped into six lettered sets, from "Questions About the Marketplace for Advertising on Platforms" through to "Miscellaneous". The clearest statement of what a rule might require appears in the set headed "Questions About Specific Rule Provisions":

"For instance, the Commission may tailor the previously proposed means-and-instrumentalities provision by requiring Platforms to evaluate advertisements prior to posting, and by prohibiting Platforms from providing advertising optimization services to those engaged in Impersonation Ads."

Two mechanisms, then: pre-publication review of ads, and a prohibition on selling ad-optimisation services to impersonators. On consequences, the Commission writes:

"A rule could realign those incentives by subjecting Platforms to court-imposed monetary sanctions for their involvement in furthering those ads."

And on the state of affairs it is describing, a fragment — the sentence continues beyond what we quote: "However, Platforms do not bear meaningful responsibility for the enormous social cost that results …"

The Commission's stated authority for all of this is 15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B) and 57a(b)(3). The document does not use the phrase "section 18 of the FTC Act" or "Magnuson-Moss", though those are the familiar names for that machinery.

The questions you are in a position to answer

This is the part worth acting on. The Commission asked for "comment, data, and arguments", and several of its questions are ones that only merchants who have actually been impersonated can answer from experience. Quoted exactly as they appear:

  • "Do Platforms generate revenue from providing advertising and/or advertising-optimization tools/services for deceptive ads?"
  • "Does the Platform screen or monitor advertisements to determine whether they are Impersonation Ads?"
  • "Would requiring Platforms to verify the identity of the advertiser before providing advertising-optimization tools/services be a cost-effective way to help mitigate Platform UDAPs?"
  • "Should Platforms be required to respond to complaints by terminating advertising-optimization tools/services for the confirmed Impersonation Ads?"
  • "Should the requirement trigger liability only if the Platform has some level of knowledge of, or participation in, the Impersonation Ad?"

If you have ever reported a paid ad that used your product photography, your brand name and a near-miss domain to sell frames you do not make, and then watched how long the takedown took and whether the same advertiser reappeared under a new account — that is the record the fourth and fifth questions are asking for. Dates, response times, whether the ad was still running when the chargebacks arrived, whether your customers contacted you about an order you never received. The Commission has asked for data and almost nobody sends it.

The question about knowledge is the one with the most riding on it. If liability requires that the platform knew, then your report is the thing that creates the knowledge, and the date you sent it is the date that matters. If it does not, pre-publication screening carries the weight instead. Those are materially different worlds for a brand that gets impersonated monthly.

The numbers the Commission is working from

Quoted from the document:

  • "consumers reported losing approximately $16 billion to fraud, a 25% increase compared to 2024."
  • "the true cost of fraud in 2024, adjusted to account for underreporting, may be as high as $195.9 billion."
  • "Last year, the FTC received over 1 million imposter reports, with consumers reporting nearly $3.5 billion in losses."
  • "with reported losses reaching $2.1 billion" — on fraud originating in social media contact.

One thing to be clear about, because it cuts against the natural reading of a post like this one. The document does not mention eyewear, glasses, optical goods or lenses anywhere. We checked for each of those words expressly; none appears. There is no eyewear-specific figure, no optical case study, and no suggestion that the Commission has this sector in mind. The relevance here is structural, not sectoral: counterfeit and look-alike advertising is a standing problem for anyone selling a recognisable physical product with brand value, and the Commission is asking an open question about who should bear its cost.

What this document does not do

Written out, because the temptation to over-read an ANPRM is strong:

  • It imposes no duty on your store. Not today, and not on 30 November. The deadline is a deadline for comments, not for compliance.
  • It contains no rule text. Nothing to implement, nothing to diff against your current practice.
  • It does not define "Impersonation Ads" as a standalone term. The phrase appears as a parenthetical inside a longer description — "deceptive advertising involving government or business impersonation ("Impersonation Ads")" — and nowhere as a defined term with elements.
  • It does not create a complaint channel, a takedown process or a remedy for you. If a fake store is running ads against your brand today, this document does not help you get it down.
  • It does not single out small businesses as impersonation victims. The Commission does ask small-business questions — "Which of these Platforms, if any, are small businesses?", "What percentage of ads on Platforms advertise small businesses?", and whether a measure would "impact small businesses differently than other businesses?" — but those are questions about platforms and about advertisers. On the businesses being impersonated, the document says only that "the legitimate businesses being impersonated suffer lost revenue and serious reputational harm."

How to file a comment

The document's own instructions. It asks you to label the comment: "Write "16 CFR part 461--Impersonation Rule, Matter No. R207000" on your comment". Then:

"file your comment online at https://www.regulations.gov, by following the instructions on the web-based form"

and "We encourage you to submit comments through the https://www.regulations.gov website." A paper route exists, to the Federal Trade Commission, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The deadline is "on or before November 30, 2026."

Two things the document's instructions will not tell you. Comments are published. Do not put a customer's name, order number, prescription or email address in one; describe the pattern and keep the personal data out. And a comment does not have to be long or legally argued — a dated, factual account of what happened when you reported an impersonation ad, and what the platform did, is a more useful contribution to a record than a page of opinion.

What this is not

Four things that are easy to conflate with this, all of them covered elsewhere on this blog:

Questions and answers

Do I have to do anything by 30 November?
No. Nothing in this document obliges you to do anything, on that date or any other. 30 November is the last day the Commission will accept comments.

If a rule eventually comes out of this, when would it bind anyone?
Unknowable from this document, and we are not going to guess. An ANPRM is the earliest formal stage. A proposal would have to follow, then a comment period on that proposal, then a final rule. The document gives no timetable.

Could a rule out of this proceeding end up binding my store rather than a platform?
Open. The 2024 means-and-instrumentalities provision would have reached any supplier of goods or services to an impersonator; the Commission dropped it and is now considering a version "tailored" to platforms. But the footnote description of "Platforms" turns on third parties offering goods through paid advertisements "or other listings", and the document does not draw the boundary. If you host third-party listings, say so in a comment.

Does this have anything to do with counterfeit goods as such?
Not directly. The subject is impersonation of a business or a government body in advertising, which overlaps with counterfeiting but is not the same thing. A fake store trading under your name is impersonation. A genuine third party selling a counterfeit frame under its own name is a different problem with different law.

Is the existing 2024 rule any use to me today?
It is in force at 16 CFR part 461 and it prohibits impersonating a business. Whether and how a private business can get relief under it is outside what this document covers and outside what we have verified. Take advice on that rather than our word for it.

Open questions we are not going to resolve for you

Stated plainly, so nobody mistakes our silence for an answer:

  • Whether a hosted storefront, marketplace, comparison engine or affiliate network falls inside the footnote description of "Platforms". Not addressed in the document.
  • How the document treats, or whether it addresses at all, the immunity questions that usually arise when a platform is held responsible for third-party content. We did not establish this and are not asserting it either way.
  • The full list that completes the 2024 means-and-instrumentalities text. We quote its lead-in only.
  • Whether the Commission will proceed at all. An ANPRM asks whether a rulemaking is needed; "no" is a possible answer.
  • The regulations.gov docket number. The document we read gives Matter No. R207000 and RIN 3084-AB90 and directs commenters to the regulations.gov web form; it does not print a docket number in the text, so use the matter number and the label the document specifies.
  • Every question in the six lettered sets that we have not quoted. We read the document and quoted what bears on an eyewear seller; the sets are considerably longer than what appears here, and if you are filing a comment you should read them yourself.

The one-paragraph version

Impersonating your business has been against a federal rule since March 2024. Selling advertising to the impersonator has not been. The Commission has opened the earliest stage of a proceeding about whether to change that, floated two mechanisms — pre-publication review of ads and a ban on supplying ad-optimisation services to impersonators — and asked whether platform liability should depend on the platform having known. It has asked for data, and the data it wants is the record of what happened the last time you reported a fake version of your store. Comments close 30 November 2026.

This article is general information about a published regulatory document and is not legal advice. It describes an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, which creates no obligations. Nothing here is a statement about any particular platform's conduct or about this store's own compliance position. For advice on your situation, consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction.

Sources

  • Federal Trade Commission, Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses, Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 91 FR 62347–62357, published 1 October 2026, FR document 2026-20143, RIN 3084-AB90, Matter No. R207000. Full text read at federalregister.gov; PDF at govinfo.gov. All quotations in this article are from that document.
  • Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses, 16 CFR part 461, published at 89 FR 15017, 1 March 2024 — cited as above in the ANPRM.
  • Comment submission: regulations.gov, per the document's own instructions.

Published 10 October 2026.

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