Consumer third-party agencies are subject to FDCPA, which went into effect in March 1978 and is administered by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) (15 USC 1692 et seq.) The FDCPA was intended to The FDCPA established standards for the debt collection industry intended "to protect consumers from harmful debt collection practices and to protect ethical collectors from competitive disadvantage." Thirty years after FDCPA was enacted, a workshop hosted by the FTC with "consumer groups, the collection industry, academia, and government agencies" participating, found that "most significant change in the debt collection business" 1997 to 2007, was the "advent and growth of debt buying (i.e., the purchasing, collecting, and reselling of debts in default)."