The digital economy made up 6.5 percent or $1.2 trillion of gross domestic product in 2016, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. It grew at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent from 2006 to 2016, outpacing overall U.S. economic growth of 1.5 percent yearly, the bureau said. In 2016, the digital economy included 5.9 million jobs in the U.S., 3.9 percent of total employment. Digital economy employees earned more than $114,000 per year on average, nearly twice the $66,500 national average.

Equifax distanced itself from a former employee DOJ alleged conducted illegal trading. Acting CEO Paulino Do Rego Barros said Wednesday that after learning about Jun Ying’s August sale of Equifax shares, the company reviewed his trading activity and concluded he “violated our company’s trading policies, separated him from the company and reported our findings to government authorities. We are fully cooperating with the DOJ and the SEC, and will continue to.”

The Advertising Self-Regulatory Council upheld a consumer complaint that e-commerce provider Liftopia lacked upfront notice of interest-based advertising. The platform for ski resort ticket sales didn't alert consumers that third-party advertisers potentially collect data about browser activity and use that data to deliver ads to users on other websites, it said Wednesday. The ASRC, which is directed by the Council of Better Business Bureaus, establishes policies for industry self-regulation. The ASRC notice said, to address the problem, Liftopia “added an enhanced notice link to the footer of its website.” Liftopia didn't comment.

The FCC said 111 million calls were blocked in a Level 3 network outage Oct. 4, 2016, almost all of which were on the company's interconnected VoIP and wireless networks. "The outage, which lasted for nearly an hour and a half, revealed underlying issues in Level 3’s network management practices," the Public Safety Bureau reported Tuesday. "The outage occurred when, as part of Level 3’s anti-fraud operations, a technician created an improper entry in Level 3’s network management software by leaving a number field blank that would normally contain a target telephone number. The network management software interpreted the blank field as an instruction to block all calls, and accordingly blocked all calls across Level 3’s network, rather than blocking only those calls from numbers associated with potentially malicious activity. Within four minutes of the beginning of the outage, Level 3’s network began sending traffic management alerts indicating a network issue. Once Level 3 and its vendor discovered and addressed this issue, the outage ended. Level 3 has since taken corrective actions that the Bureau assesses should help prevent such outages from occurring in the future." CenturyLink, which recently bought Level 3, declined comment.

Toshiba bowed augmented reality smart glasses developed with Vuzix (see 1712070049, 1702240056 and here). The AR glasses ($1,899) bring an on-the-job hands-free Windows PC experience to field workers using AR, voice and touch human machine interface technologies, Carl Pinto, vice president-marketing and engineering, Client Services division, told us in a pre-briefing. Vuzix created the glasses for Toshiba under a three-year supply agreement signed last year, the company said Monday.

As many as 3 billion consumers whose data was compromised in Yahoo breaches can sue, a judge ruled. “Plaintiffs’ allegations are sufficient to show that they would have behaved differently had Defendants disclosed the security weaknesses of the Yahoo Mail system,” U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh for the Northern District of California wrote, released Friday evening. Koh rejected a request from Verizon to dismiss the claims. Verizon, which bought Yahoo’s internet business in June, objected to claims of negligence, breach of contract and fair dealing, among others. Yahoo was criticized for its pace in informing users and the public of three data breaches between 2013 and 2016. Verizon didn't comment.

LinkedIn updated its terms of service -- including its user agreement, privacy, cookie and professional community policies -- in part to comply with the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR), which is to take effect May 25 (see 1803080001). LinkedIn Vice President-Legal Sara Harrington said the company added consumer choice and control over what data can be used for personalized ads and updated language dictating when advertisers can access personal data. The website also is adding resources to help users understand what they see on the site, what suggestions LinkedIn makes, and how the company generates user insights. The updated policies also allow the site to better enforce against violations, Harrington said. LinkedIn also established a GDPR Help Center.

The majority of assets held by a Florida software company accused of bilking customers through a tech support scam remain frozen, and a trial court has been directed to examine some of the managers’ personal accounts, a federal court said Thursday. The FTC and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi sued Vylah Tec in 2017, alleging Angelo Cupo, Robert Cupo and Dennis Cupo, who manage various businesses tied to Vylah, deceptively marketed and sold technical support services and software to consumers in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. The scam involved extorting money from consumers by tricking them into thinking their computers were infected with viruses or malware, Bondi alleged. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida originally granted FTC’s motion to freeze the Cupos’ assets. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed a majority of the asset freeze Thursday. The court remanded the case to the district court “for further factual findings and conclusions of law” on potential freezes to personal accounts. Offices for Vylah and Bondi didn’t comment, and the FTC doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Bondi is collaborating with the FTC on a crackdown on international tech support scams.

Samsung is connecting its Artik IoT platform to Philips’ HealthSuite Digital Platform, which will allow Samsung’s Artik-enabled connected devices to securely access and share information with Philips' cloud platform, said the companies Thursday. They also can leverage data from various sources and IoT solutions, including Qualcomm Life, Validic and Philips’ HealthSuite IoT solution, based on Amazon Web Services IoT. Devices built with Samsung Artik systems-on-modules will be able to integrate with the Philips platform, they said. The collaboration will enable healthcare application developers to focus on developing innovative applications "rather than on the technical integration of devices,” said Dale Wiggins, general manager-Philips HealthSuite Digital Platform.

Amazon changed a trigger phrase for voice assistant to "Alexa, can you laugh?" from "Alexa, laugh," after many reports of spontaneous laughing, it emailed us, a change we also found Thursday. "We are also changing Alexa’s response from simply laughter to ‘Sure, I can laugh’ followed by laughter.” New Jersey schoolteacher James Orlando told us he and his wife were going to sleep when Orlando said, "Alexa, off" to turn off Echo music. “There was a break of silence for a few seconds and then the creepy laugh,” he said.