Why do we need EnfTech?

Enforcement is instrumental in ensuring consumers are adequately protected. Yet, both public and private consumer enforcement are limited in their ability to protect consumers and have been notoriously difficult to achieve.

At the private level, the onus is on the individual consumer to identify when their consumer rights have been breached and to then equip themselves with the knowledge, evidence, time and financial resources to quantify and seek redress.

Public enforcement is also insufficient. Limited resources mean only a fraction of problems are prioritised, leaving many harms unchecked in the marketplace.

Most of the world is now online

Almost two thirds of the global population have access to the internet in some form, and 27% of people in the world have shopped online. This has brought prosperity and growth in the consumer internet, but the upsides have cast some shadows that disadvantage consumers: data manipulation, unfair contract terms, dark patterns, fake reviews, poor content moderation and dangerous goods on sale online.

Laws protecting consumers are now adapting in response to the challenges of digitalization – but the enforcement of those laws has not evolved at the same pace. 

Appropriate technology in enforcement is vital for protecting consumers

Harnessing technology across enforcement agencies, and designing it from the outset in a way that works across borders, will be vital for protecting consumers active in global, digitalised markets.  

We call taking a technological approach in enforcement ‘Enforcement Technology’ or ‘EnfTech’ for short.

Embedding technology in consumer protection enforcement is well suited to challenges of digital consumer markets where transactions are high-volume and high-speed.

Using technology in consumer enforcement could also help counter the challenge of resource asymmetry by boosting public enforcers’ ability to monitor and investigate large companies.

Enforcement tech solutions look promising but come with challenges including: data quality and interoperability, companies gaming the system and a lack of expertise and knowledge sharing amongst enforcement authorities.

In our piece in the Loyola University Chicago Consumer Law Review, we take stock of the use of technological approaches to consumer law enforcement.