Consumer IoT awaits its “iPod moment,” said Jonathan Gaw, IDC research manager-connected home, on a webcast on findings of a March consumer survey. Most consumer IoT devices add connectivity and apps to existing home devices that do “little more than save users the bother of a few steps to click a switch,” he said. IDC’s survey of 1,517 U.S. adults with broadband at home indicated a flattening of interest in smart home adoption. Consumers lack understanding of what networked technology can do, said Gaw. Three-quarters of U.S. broadband households have the devices and services in place that would enable video streaming from Internet to the TV, and 28 percent do it. Just over 30 percent of consumers said they were highly interested in streaming online videos to TV but weren’t doing it, even though a majority of those owned the devices and paid for subscriptions that would enable them to do so. Nine of 10 owned a home network -- what Gaw called the “critical part of home IoT readiness." Respondents expressed concerns about privacy and security, said Gaw, though respondents hadn’t done much to protect their data.

Global spending on IoT security will reach $348 million in 2016, a 24 percent increase from 2015, and is expected to reach $547 million in 2018, Gartner said in a Monday report. Though IoT security spending will be “moderate” at the outset, it will increase “at a faster rate after 2020, as improved skills, organizational change and more scalable service options improve execution,” said the research firm. “The market for IoT security products is currently small but it is growing as both consumers and businesses start using connected devices in ever greater numbers." The firm forecasts 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 11.4 billion by 2018. “However, considerable variation exists among different industry sectors as a result of different levels of prioritization and security awareness," it said. Gartner predicts by 2020 more than 25 percent of identified attacks in enterprises will involve IoT, but IoT will be less than 10 percent of IT security budgets, it said. “Security vendors will be challenged to provide usable IoT security features because of the limited assigned budgets for IoT and the decentralized approach to early IoT implementations in organizations. Vendors will focus too much on spotting vulnerabilities and exploits, rather than segmentation and other long-term means that better protect IoT.”

ICANN released a final draft version of the nonprofit corporation’s revised bylaws Thursday for public comment. ICANN’s lawyers began revising the bylaws in March to comply with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition plan and a set of recommended changes to the nonprofit’s accountability mechanisms, both of which the ICANN board approved in March (see 1603100070). ICANN stakeholders told us this month an early draft of the revised bylaws largely track with provisions in both the IANA transition plan and the accountability recommendations from the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (see 1604060063). ICANN’s lawyers also said the draft bylaws “are consistent with the community proposals” on the IANA transition, ICANN said in a notice. Comments on the draft bylaws are due May 21, which “allows for comments to be analyzed and incorporated” in time for the ICANN board to vote on the revised bylaws May 27, ICANN said. “NTIA has stated that it needs to see that changes to [ICANN’s bylaws] have been adopted sufficient to implement the [IANA transition plan] before NTIA can complete its review” of those plans.

More than a million people use Facebook over the Tor Internet anonymizing software since Facebook made the website directly available over the Tor network in 2014, wrote Alec Muffett, Facebook's software engineer for security infrastructure, in a Friday blog post. Last June, about 525,000 people accessed Facebook over Tor over a "typical 30 day period" by using the Tor browser to access the site directly, the Facebook Onion site built specifically for Tor users or through the Orbot app on Android devices, he said. "This number has grown -- roughly linearly -- and this month, for the first time, we saw this '30 day' figure exceed 1 million people." People use Tor generally to improve their privacy and security on the Internet.

IDC sees worldwide shipments of virtual reality hardware skyrocketing in 2016, with total volume reaching 9.6 million units worth $2.3 billion, the research firm said in a Thursday report. In 2016, the first major “tethered” VR devices from Oculus, HTC and Sony "should drive combined shipments of over 2 million units," IDC said. "When you combine this with robust shipments of screenless viewers from Samsung and other vendors launching later this year, you start to see the beginning of a reasonable installed base for content creators to target." IDC expects augmented reality hardware “to take longer to bring to market,” it said. "While development kits from players such as Microsoft, Meta, and others point to a strong future in AR hardware, these devices are dramatically harder to produce than VR products."

U.S. Internet advertising revenue reached a record $59.6 billion in 2015, 20 percent above the prior year, helped by a surge in mobile, digital video and social media ads, said the Interactive Advertising Bureau in a report released Thursday. IAB's report, prepared by PwC, said it's the sixth consecutive year the industry has seen double-digit growth. Mobile advertising soared to $20.7 billion in 2015, 66 percent above 2014, the report said. “Mobile’s impressive upswing is a testament to its increasing importance to marketers,” IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg said in a news release. "Three key disruptive trends -- mobile, social, and programmatic -- continue to fuel this,” added PwC partner David Silverman. The report said nonmobile digital video ad revenue totaled $4.2 billion in 2015, up 30 percent from the prior year, while social media ad revenue totaled $10.9 billion in 2015, up 55 percent from 2014. Retail advertisers generated 22 percent of total revenue in 2015 -- up from 21 percent in 2014 -- the largest category of Internet ad spending, the report said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation sued DOJ to find out whether the government used "secret orders" to compel technology companies to decrypt the private communications of customers, after two EFF Freedom of Information Act requests and appeals went denied or unanswered. EFF, which filed the lawsuit Tuesday, said the practice could jeopardize the security of devices used by millions of people. The federal government has sought assistance from technology companies, notably Apple in the San Bernardino, California, mass shooting case and others (see 1603290059), through legal challenges in traditional federal courts, EFF said. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "allows the government to seek technical assistance from third parties with respect to any application it seeks or order or opinion it receives from the" Foreign Intelligence Service Court (FISC), the suit said. The privacy group wants to know how much FISA has been used and how much FISC has forced companies to help the government. “If the government is obtaining FISC orders to force a company to build backdoors or decrypt their users’ communications, the public has a right to know about those secret demands to compromise people’s phones and computers,” said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Nate Cardozo in a news release. EFF filed a FOIA request with DOJ's National Security Division Oct. 8, and Justice responded that it hadn't found any documents except for "two items of potentially responsive correspondence" that were determined to be exempt from FOIA. EFF filed an administrative appeal Jan. 22, saying DOJ "improperly withheld records under FOIA." That was denied April 4. EFF filed another FOIA request March 7, which DOJ hasn't responded to, prompting the suit. Justice declined to comment Wednesday.

Amazon, the Internet Association and Microsoft were among 11 tech companies and industry groups that jointly told Congress Tuesday that ICANN’s Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition-related plans meet the NTIA’s criteria for the transition process and include “significant and concrete measures to enhance ICANN’s accountability to its global community.” ICANN sent NTIA its IANA transition plan and a set of recommended changes to the nonprofit corporation’s accountability mechanisms in March. NTIA expects to complete its review of ICANN’s plans in June (see 1603100070 and 1603110075). “The Internet is defined by its inclusivity and openness. Those critical characteristics are reflected in the work that -- over the course of many months of open, transparent and inclusive discussion -- went into the drafting of” the IANA transition plans, the tech companies and groups said in a letter. “We recognize that additional important work remains, including properly revising ICANN’s bylaws and further improving ICANN’s practices and procedures. It is imperative that this work be accomplished in a timely and effective manner and we look forward to ensuring that it does.” The other signatories to the letter included Cisco, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, Dell, Hewlett Packard, the Information Technology Industry Council, Intel, the Internet Infrastructure Coalition and the U.S. Council for International Business.

Eighty-seven percent of registered voters polled are very or somewhat concerned that a person or organization they don't trust could get access to private information stored on their electronic devices or mobile apps, ACT|The App Association found in a commissioned survey released Monday. On a media call, Doug Usher, who heads polling firm Purple Insights, said 71 percent of respondents believe the threat from cybercriminals and hackers is increasing, and only 2 percent think it is decreasing. Eighty percent said companies like Apple and Google should continue to build strong innovative safeguards to strengthen data encryption, and only 13 percent believe it's adequate, he said. More people trust companies than the federal government -- 54 percent vs. 21 percent, he said. Plus, overwhelming majorities, close to 90 percent, either believe back doors could be misused and make personal data more vulnerable or criminals and terrorists could use them to create additional threats. During the call, Purple Strategies CEO Steve McMahon, a longtime Democratic consultant, said it "surprised" him most that a "broad and universal agreement" exists among civil libertarians and national security supporters on all measures. "I suppose that's a good sign that it's not impossible to find common ground in Washington even today," he said. The nationwide survey of 1,250 registered voters was done via cellphone or landline April 11-14.

Consumers in 24 countries, including the U.S., are increasingly worried by how their personal information is being managed by companies and governments, said a Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)-commissioned global survey released Monday. Done by research firm Ipsos, the survey of 24,153 users Nov. 20-Dec. 4 found 57 percent of people globally were more concerned about their online privacy than a year ago. Only 30 percent of respondents said they thought their government "is doing enough" to keep personal data secure and safe from companies, the survey said. The poll found 38 percent didn't think their Internet activities were being monitored, while 46 percent thought their activities weren't being censored. "Internet users are expressing a clear lack of trust in the current set of rules and, more importantly, in the actors that oversee the sharing and use of personal data online,” Fen Hampson, director of Canada-based CIGI’s global security and politics program, said in a news release. But 70 percent of respondents said law enforcement agencies should have a right to access people's online communications for "valid national security reasons," including 64 percent of Americans, the survey said. It also said 63 percent of respondents don't want companies to develop technologies preventing law enforcement from accessing content of people's online conversations.