The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Federal Trade Commission are poised to examine how debt collectors use social media websites like those run by Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to contact potential debtors, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. U.S. regulators are mulling a series of actions in 2013 as they impose comprehensive federal oversight for the first time over the debt collection industry, which generated 180,000 consumer complaints to the FTC in 2011. In the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB gained new powers over debt collectors that no other federal agency ever had. Richard Cordray, the CFPB director, has made debt collection a priority for the agency because about 30 million consumers -- “nearly one out of every 10 Americans” -- have accounts in collection totaling $1,500 on average, he said in an Oct. 24 speech.
