Lumos Labs (maker of Lumosity) pays $2 million to settle FTC deceptive advertising charges

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Lumos­i­ty must pay $2 mil­lion after “unfound­ed” brain game claims (Fast Company):

“The mak­er of brain game app Lumos­i­ty has agreed to pay $2 mil­lion to set­tle charges brought by the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, which alleged it deceived con­sumers about the product’s brain-train­ing benefits.

The FTC said Tues­day that Lumos­i­ty made “unfound­ed claims” that its games could help users do bet­ter at work and school and help reduce the effects of con­di­tions includ­ing Alzheimer’s, atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der, and trau­mat­ic brain injury…

Lumos­i­ty said in a state­ment Tues­day that it intends to con­tin­ue offer­ing its prod­ucts to users. “Nei­ther the action nor the set­tle­ment per­tains to the rig­or of our research or the qual­i­ty of the products—it is a reflec­tion of mar­ket­ing lan­guage that has been dis­con­tin­ued,” the com­pa­ny said…

Under the terms of the set­tle­ment, the com­pa­ny agreed to noti­fy cus­tomers who signed up for auto-renew­al sub­scrip­tions between Jan. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2014, about the FTC’s alle­ga­tions and give them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to can­cel their sub­scrip­tions. The com­pa­ny also agreed not to make fur­ther sci­en­tif­ic claims with­out “com­pe­tent and reli­able sci­en­tif­ic evidence.”

To learn more:

• Solv­ing the Brain Fit­ness Puz­zle Is the Key to Self-Empow­ered Aging
• Brain Train­ing Eval­u­a­tion Checklist
• Can brain train­ing work? Yes, if it meets these 5 conditions
• Ten crit­i­cal ques­tions to nav­i­gate media cov­er­age of lat­est sci­en­tif­ic findings