About 70 percent of a tested set of 10,000 domain names in ICANN’s Whois system passed all syntax accuracy requirements included in ICANN’s 2009 registrar accreditation agreement (RAA), ICANN said Monday in a report. ICANN has been developing and testing its Accuracy Reporting System to identify potentially inaccurate Whois contact information and forward that information on to registrars for further action. Ninety-nine percent of all tested email addresses met the 2009 RAA’s syntax requirements, as did 85 percent of tested phone numbers and 79 percent of all postal addresses, ICANN said. All domains are required to meet the 2009 RAA’s syntax accuracy standards, while only domains not grandfathered under the 2013 RAA must meet the 2013 agreement’s stricter syntax accuracy standards. Only 34 percent of the 3,848 tested domain names not grandfathered under the 2013 RAA met all of that RAA’s syntax accuracy requirements, though 97 percent met requirements for email addresses. More than 84 percent of the nongrandfathered 2013 RAA domains met requirements for phone numbers, while 44 percent met requirements for postal addresses. The 2013 RAA’s additional syntax accuracy requirements mainly focused on postal addresses, ICANN said. The organization said it’s planning to issue a report on follow-up efforts to remedy syntax inaccuracies in the tested domain names and is planning to complete an additional round of syntax accuracy testing in November. In a related Whois issue, groups have been battling over whether ICANN should allow registrations that mask domain-name ownership through the use of IP proxy servers (see 1507060059 and 1507170064).

Rentboy.com CEO Jeffrey Hurant and six other website employees were arrested Tuesday and were to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, on charges of violating the Travel Act by promoting prostitution, the Department of Justice said. Rentboy.com, which opened in 1997, hosts thousands of paid ads for male escort services. Justice said it also plans to seize $1.4 million from company accounts and was taking steps to shut down the website. Rentboy.com wasn’t accessible at our deadline. The website has disclaimers that say the site is for companionship advertising only not sexual services, but it’s clearly “designed primarily for advertising illegal prostitution,” Justice said. It said subscribers were able to categorize their ads based on what services they’re willing to perform and can link to another website that allows past customers to rate them. “Rentboy.com attempted to present a veneer of legality, when in fact this internet brothel made millions of dollars from the promotion of illegal prostitution,” Acting U.S. Attorney Kelly Currie said in a news release.

Hulu said its partnerships with LiveRail and Oracle will allow advertisers to deliver data-informed advertising this fall, allowing Hulu to “create new opportunities for advertisers with an automated, seamless, data-driven process ... Hulu will be able to deliver marketers real-time adjustments and give them more control over their campaigns.” Hulu plans to deploy the Oracle Data Management Platform (DMP) and LiveRail’s Video Private Exchange (VPX). Oracle’s DMP will allow advertisers “to personalize their advertising campaigns on Hulu with more rich information about their target audiences to deliver even stronger campaign results,” Hulu said Tuesday. LiveRail’s VPX will allow Hulu “to use LiveRail’s granular level controls to target campaigns with the ability to make real-time decisions on the value of individual impressions, driving campaign effectiveness and results for advertisers and increasing the relevance of ads for their viewers,” Hulu said. “The marketplace has shown that data is overwhelmingly the new currency,” said Hulu Senior Vice President-Advertising Peter Naylor in a blog post.

Online scammers are looking for people to help them transfer money and stolen goods by claiming to offer work-at-home jobs or pretend to be a romantic partner and then ask for a “favor,” FTC Consumer Education Specialist Bridget Small wrote in a blog post Monday. The goal is to “use your bank account, personal information and address to help them steal money,” Small said. “Bottom line: If someone you don’t know -- and that includes someone you met online -- asks for personal or financial information, don’t respond,” she said. “If they ask you to deposit checks, accept funds or wire money, don’t get involved.” Be alert for job scams, too, she said.

An advocacy group joined others in slamming Ashley Madison parent Avid Life Media (see 1508210042) for what they say is abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. ALM sent "numerous DMCA takedown notices to platforms like Twitter, Reddit, and others in an attempt to stop the dissemination of millions of names and email addresses of the site’s users,” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz in a blog post Monday. “Regardless of whether their goal is a noble one, their use of the DMCA is problematic.” Facts like names, addresses and phone numbers can’t be copyrighted, he said. Biographical descriptions and pickup lines can be copyrighted by users, but ALM still wouldn’t be able to send a DMCA takedown notice, he said. Ashley Madison users’ could transfer copyrights to ALM, but Stoltz said that is a difficult and rarely done process. ALM’s DMCA takedown notices have been vague and are “unlikely to curtail access to the data,” Stoltz said. Millions want to see the data disappear, but misusing DMCA “encourages more abuse, such as censoring political commentary and criticism,” he said. ALM didn't comment.

A lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed against Avid Life Media, parent of Ashley Madison, by “John Doe,” individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, following the dumping of sensitive personal and financial information users disclosed when creating an account (see 1508200039). The suit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. “Doe” is a Los Angeles resident who created an account with Ashley Madison in March 2012, according to court documents. The defendant alleged ALM stores the account information in an “unencrypted format at the database level,” despite identifying itself as “the last truly secure space on the Internet.” Doe alleged the data breach could have been prevented if ALM had “taken the necessary and reasonable precautions to protect its users’ information by, for example, encrypting the data entrusted to it by its users,” the “publicity of this information has created and will continue to create irreparable harm,” and that ALM failed to notify him and others of the breach in a timely manner. Doe seeks “compensatory and punitive damages with interest, attorneys’ fees and costs, and any other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper.” Attorneys for Doe didn’t comment. ALM also didn't comment.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, at the request of the FTC, filed an antitrust lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against three hedge fund companies and their management company Monday, DOJ said in a news release. Third Point and three Third Point funds violated premerger reporting laws in connection with their 2011 acquisition of stock in Yahoo, the FTC said in a news release Monday. The defendants claimed they were exempt from reporting to the U.S. antitrust authorities because the purchases were made solely for investment purposes, the agency said. But Third Point made investment decisions that were inconsistent with an investment-only intent, such as communicating with third parties to determine interest in becoming CEO or board candidates at Yahoo, the FTC said. The commission voted 3-2 to refer the complaint and proposed settlement to DOJ. Commissioners Maureen Ohlhausen and Joshua Wright, on his last day at the FTC (see 1508170051), voted no. “Commissioners Ohlhausen and Wright do not take issue with our conclusion that there is reason to believe that an HSR [Hart-Scott-Rodino Act] violation occurred, but they do question whether the public interest supports a referral of this matter for enforcement,” Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and Commissioners Julie Brill and Terrell McSweeny wrote in a joint statement. “We conclude that it does.” In their joint dissenting statement, Ohlhausen and Wright said the majority misunderstood their reasoning for opposition. “Our opposition ... does not hinge solely on the risk of competitive harm from Third Point’s acquisitions of Yahoo Stock,” they said. “It is based on the lack of competitive harm.” DOJ also filed a proposed settlement that would settle the charges against Third Point and its funds if approved by the court, Justice said. Written comments on the proposed settlement will be subject to a 60-day public comment period, DOJ said. Third Point didn’t comment.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the FTC in the agency’s privacy case against Wyndham Worldwide, Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro wrote in a decision Monday. Other circuit judges included Jane Roth and Anthony Scirica. After Wyndham’s computer systems were breached three times in 2008 and 2009 by hackers, resulting in hundreds of thousands of consumers having their personal and financial information stolen, the FTC alleged that Wyndham’s conduct was unfair and its privacy policy was deceptive. A federal district court denied Wyndham’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The 3rd Circuit granted interlocutory appeal on two issues: Whether the FTC has authority to regulate cybersecurity under the unfairness prong of its Section 5 authority and whether Wyndham had fair notice from the FTC that its cybersecurity practices fell short. Ultimately, the appeals court sided with the FTC. “The three requirements in § 45(n) may be necessary rather than sufficient conditions of an unfair practice, but we are not persuaded that any other requirements proposed by Wyndham pose a serious challenge to the FTC’s claim here,” Ambro wrote. “Wyndham repeatedly argued there is no FTC interpretation of § 45(a) or (n) to which the federal courts must defer in this case, and, as a result, the courts must interpret the meaning of the statute as it applies to Wyndham’s conduct in the first instance,” he said. “Thus, Wyndham cannot argue it was entitled to know with ascertainable certainty the cybersecurity standards by which the FTC expected it to conform,” Ambro said. “Instead, the company can only claim that it lacked fair notice of the meaning of the statute itself -- a theory it did not meaningfully raise and that we strongly suspect would be unpersuasive under the facts of this case.” Wyndham had no immediate comment. The ruling "reaffirms the FTC’s authority to hold companies accountable for failing to safeguard consumer data,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said. “It is not only appropriate, but critical, that the FTC has the ability to take action on behalf of consumers when companies fail to take reasonable steps to secure sensitive consumer information.”

A “strong majority” of the 151 Google Express Services workers in Palo Alto, California, voted Friday to join the San Leandro-based Teamsters Local 853, the union said. Workers at Apple, eBay, Facebook and Yahoo previously joined the local. Google Express workers have raised concerns about their compensation and working conditions, saying they're limited to two-year contracts via Google’s Adecco contractor. "It's surprising that workers who warehouse and ship for Google Express would be subjected to such Third World conditions," said Teamsters International Vice President Rome Aloise in a news release. The unionization announcement occurred after Google said it planned to close its San Francisco and Palo Alto Google Express delivery locations. Adecco believes “our associates are better off directly dealing with us as their employer rather than involving a union,” a spokeswoman said. “However, we are supportive of any direction freely chosen by our associates.” Google didn’t comment.

The Home Gateway Initiative (HGI) released a document Monday that extends its quality of service (QoS) architecture to cover the home network. RD012 outlines requirements for QoS functions such as classification and queuing within powerline or Wi-Fi adaptors that carry Internet data between home gateways and connected smart home devices. The HGI document also explains how multicast content such as Internet TV should be handled by home network adaptors. HGI Chief Technology and Business Officer Duncan Bees said the technical requirements were developed with input from service providers, and HGI has considered a range of technical requirements for the home network that provide guidance for manufacturers. Another recommendation published this month: RD031, which sets requirements for power management of home network devices for energy savings by allowing devices to enter a quiescent state when not actively processing data traffic or performing primary functions, HGI said. The energy savings could be either customer-initiated by turning off a set-top box when not in use, or it could be automatically initiated, HGI said. RD031 defines two functions: network connectivity proxy and the energy controller that controls the power states of connected devices, taking into account the latest European Commission Regulations about power consumption limits for networked standby products, HGI said. “Power saving has been a major focus of service providers for some time and the new work extends beyond consideration of a single box to define coordination among different devices,” Bees said. “It supports energy-saving Smart Home services" and HGI hopes to see a "unified approach to power management of connected devices in the home based upon this architecture.”