An Anonymous Coward writes:
Consumerist
reports [consumerist.com] on a
proposed judgment in Federal Trade Commission vs. Lumos Labs, Inc, d.b.a. Lumosity [ftc.gov], which includes monetary penalties of $50 million (suspended, because according to paragraphs of legalese, "Lumosity doesn't have the money to pay it"), as well as $2 million to be held in escrow to execute the suspension. In addition, Lumosity must no longer make claims that their games improve cognitive ability or heal psychological illnesses (and if claims of improved cognitive and memory performance are true, that makes Lumosity subject to FDA regulation), nor can they claim their product is "clinically proven." Lumosity has been spending the past few years in a marketing marathon, including Google ads triggered by users searching for brain diseases, as well as underwriting for National Public Radio and American Public Media. Interestingly,
an NPR news story filed by Ina Jaffe in January 2014 [npr.org] quotes the National Institute on Aging's Cognitive Aging Program head Jonathan King, saying that he has nothing against sites like Lumosity, but "we really don't know how well they work."
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