FTC consumer protection rules covering truthful advertising, endorsement disclosures, dark pattern prevention, and AI transparency practices.
This audit evaluates 20 checks across truthful advertising and claims (no deceptive claims, clear pricing, free conditions, comparison claims, testimonials), endorsement and disclosure requirements (paid endorsements, affiliate links, no fabricated reviews, influencer and AI-generated content disclosure), dark patterns and negative options (no hidden subscriptions, easy cancellation, no confirm-shaming, labeled upsells, accessible refunds), and AI and automated decisions (AI content disclosure, automated decision explanations, no deceptive AI personas). For any application that advertises, sells, or uses AI-generated content, this audit identifies FTC compliance gaps.
20
Total Checks
3
Delivery Formats
5
Categories
6
Versions
Quality hardening: added counting/enumeration to all checks, numeric thresholds, quoting requirements, negative guardrails, measurement-on-pass reporting, and cross-references. Manifests tightened to exact tolerances.
2026-04-02
Added chunked format for browser-based tools
2026-03-01
Improved Step 3: paste URL is now primary submission method
2026-03-01
Tightened skip criteria for three AI-related checks to eliminate chatbot-induced flakiness: (1) ai-generated-content-disclosed: explicitly excludes AI chatbots (covered by no-deceptive-ai-personas), limits scope to AI content generation in review/testimonial pipelines; (2) ai-content-disclosed: explicitly excludes conversational interfaces, scopes to static/asynchronous content artifacts; (3) ftc-ai-guidance-followed: clarified that apps with AI features (even undisclosed chatbots) should not skip — only skip when truly no AI features exist.
2026-03-01
Hardened curl commands with -sS -L flags for redirect following and error visibility. Added response validation guidance to Step 3.
2026-02-23
Initial release
2026-02-22