Microsoft will categorize user data as required or optional, document it publicly and submit a biannual report describing changes to required data collection, Corporate Vice President Julie Brill blogged Tuesday. Required data collection will include data “necessary to making our products and services work as expected by the customer, or to help ensure their security,” Brill said. That includes search query terms, IP addresses, device types and diagnostic data, and consumers have the option to opt out of collection in certain instances. Optional means collection of data not “essential to the product or service experience,” she wrote. That includes, for example, data about photos inserted into Word documents. The biannual report defining data collection will be published at privacy.microsoft.com.

Amazon is “ahead of schedule and on pace” to create 400 new jobs this year at its HQ2 in Arlington, Virginia, blogged Ardine Williams, vice president-workforce development, Monday. Its goal is to hire 25,000 in Arlington “over the next decade plus,” she said. “We’ve enjoyed a warm welcome from the community and the strong support from state and local government has allowed us to make significant progress towards establishing our presence here.” Williams was among several Amazon executives who faced tough questions during a confrontational Jan. 30 New York City Council hearing from several members skeptical of Amazon’s plans, under her watch, to recruit Queens public-housing tenants for customer service jobs at its other planned HQ2 in Long Island City (see 1901300048). Amazon scrapped the project two weeks later, citing lack of local government support (see 1902140054). Monday was “an important step” for Amazon in Arlington “as we lease office space and begin hiring,” said Williams. “We will welcome our new employees to our temporary office space on Crystal Drive in June while we work toward opening our first building this fall.” Amazon posted its first job listings Monday, and “while the number is small, these employees will help build the foundation of our workforce and workplace,” she said.

Ford will factory-install modems in all new vehicles it sells in the U.S. by year-end, and in 90 percent of the cars it sells globally by 2020, said CEO Jim Hackett on a Q1 call Thursday. It’s in keeping with the “Smart Vehicles for a Smart World” theme of his CES 2018 keynote, in which he said “cities are going to be communicating back to the vehicles and vice versa,” he said. “We have the opportunity to help create a better transportation system that will improve lives.” Ford plans to “leverage this connectivity to continuously improve our vehicles and services and create better experiences for our customers,” he said. “We know this will build loyalty and deliver recurring revenue streams.” Ford has picked a third U.S. city for test-deploying autonomous vehicles (AVs) to follow Miami and Washington and expects to announce the location later in 2019, said Hackett. “We're testing in some really challenging areas,” he said when asked to explain why Ford is expanding AVs to more cities when other automakers are cutting back. “I don't want to pick on any competitor because it's not my purpose, but you could put these vehicles in places where the weather never changes,” he said. “We’ve opted into some really difficult settings” to prove AVs’ “capability,” he said. If AVs were “only destined for the L.A. freeways, you don't have to deal with dogs and baseballs running across them,” he said. General Motors also is testing AVs in big cities (see 1904260002).

Businesses worldwide will spend nearly $1.2 trillion this year on “digital transformation” as they seek a competitive edge, said IDC Tuesday. “Discrete manufacturing” ($221.6 billion) and “process manufacturing” ($124.5 billion) are the two industrial sectors expected to invest the most in digital transformation. Each will pursue “a different mix of strategic priorities, from omni-channel commerce for the retail industry to digital supply chain optimization” for the logistics industry, it said. It estimates hardware and services investments will be more than 75 percent of 2019 digital transformation spending.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is investigating Facebook’s “unauthorized collection of 1.5 million Facebook” users' email contacts (see 1904180060), her office announced Thursday. Though the platform claims it collected data for 1.5 million users, consumers affected without consent could be “hundreds of millions,” given the number of contacts involved, James said. The data collected allegedly was used for targeted advertising, she continued. Email verification is standard for such services, she said, noting the company requested email passwords. James is one of multiple state AGs investigating Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal and data practices (see 1902010049). “We're in touch with the New York State attorney general’s office and are responding to their questions on this matter," a Facebook spokesperson said.

Silicon Labs shares closed up 18 percent at $110.04 Wednesday amid signs the semiconductor industry slump is coming to an end. Executives noted growth in key segments. Q1 bookings were “robust,” signaling a Q2 rebound “despite macro turbulence,” said CEO Tyson Tuttle. Revenue was $188 million, at the midpoint of guidance, compared with $205 million in Q1 2018, the company reported. Sequentially, revenue was down 13 percent due to the “broad slowdown in the semiconductor industry,” said Chief Financial Officer John Hollister. This “should represent the bottom of the downturn,” said Tuttle. “We have not seen material improvements in key macroeconomic conditions, including geopolitical and trade factors” since the January earnings call. Silicon Labs expects Q2 revenue of $202 million-$212 million on sequential growth in its IoT, broadcast and access businesses, with infrastructure “flat.” The company’s Wireless Gecko Series 2 launch was announced Monday. The platform enables “payment-grade” security down to the device level, the chief said. Products on deck are geared to the Bluetooth, Z-Wave and “higher levels of functionality,” he said.

Facebook expects to lose between $3 billion and $5 billion as a result of the FTC’s investigation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and data privacy practices, said Wednesday’s Q1 report, signaling a potential record fine for the agency. “The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome." The report includes a $3 billion legal expense “accrued in the first quarter of 2019 related to the ongoing” FTC probe. The tech platform reported $2.4 billion profit for the quarter, down 51 percent from the year-ago quarter. The company didn’t comment.

An online rewards website and a children’s dress-up games site failed to properly secure consumer data and allowed hackers to breach both sites, the FTC alleged in two settlements announced Wednesday with a 5-0 vote. A settlement with i-Dressup.com included a $35,000 civil penalty and alleged Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act violations. Unixiz, owners of i-Dressup.com, didn’t secure parental consent for collecting data on children under 13, the FTC said. The operators also transmitted personal information in plain text and failed to secure data that led to a breach, the agency said. Owner of online rewards ClixSense.com, James Grago, deceived consumers about data protections, while failing to implement “minimal data security measures,” the FTC said in a settlement that doesn’t include a fine. Future violations of the settlements carry civil penalties up to $42,530 per offense. Neither company commented. The agency is committed to strengthening its consent order, particularly on privacy violations, said a statement. The deals included new requirements that “go beyond requirements from previous data security orders,” the commission said: a senior officer must provide “annual certifications of compliance” to the agency, and the defendants are barred from “making misrepresentations to the third parties conducting assessments of their data security programs.”

The FTC doesn’t have proper tools or resources to regulate the data broker industry, Intel Global Privacy Officer David Hoffman wrote Tuesday. Data brokers identify as technology companies but are nothing more than “malicious profiteers” weaponizing and monetizing data, he said. The agency has difficulty extending Section 5 of the FTC Act to regulate data brokers, which gather sensitive information without directly interacting with consumers, Hoffman wrote. The agency lacks proper rulemaking authority, and the “teeth” needed to incentivize proper handling of data, Hoffman wrote, citing recent comments to the agency. The Association of National Advertisers' Data Marketing and Analytics Division didn't immediately comment.

The right-to-repair movement's spread into consumer tech has “direct roots” in the allegedly “illegal” practices “now common in enterprise computing" of tying service updates to maintenance contracts that choke off third-party competition, said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of the Repair Association. Member iFixit alleges major tech firms link security updates to service subscriptions (see 1903170001). Cisco, HP Enterprise, IBM and Oracle “linked access to safety and security updates to having a separate maintenance contract in place with the OEM entitled by serial number,” said Gordon-Byrne. "Third parties cannot acquire patches and fixes even on behalf of the customer unless the customer has such a contract.” None of the companies she cited responded to queries Monday. Right-to-repair advocates argue such arrangements are “illegal” under U.S. antitrust law, emailed Gordon-Byrne. Advocates met with DOJ’s Antitrust Division, but “we came to understand very quickly that anti-trust law wouldn't come to our rescue in our lifetime,” she said. The department advised the advocates to “seek a legislative solution -- which we have done,” said Gordon-Byrne. DOJ didn’t comment. Right-to-repair bills were introduced in nearly two dozen state legislatures this year, but the bills historically have had a poor success record (see 1904030028). When consumers “can't repair our stuff, the only route we have if it is available is the manufacturer's service,” Georgian David Bley commented last week in docket FTC-2019-0013. “I hear about people submitting legislation to gain the right to repair the stuff that they own,” he said. “I am not sure when we lost that right, because as a kid, we always tried to fix whatever we owned that broke.” Comments are due April 30 for submitting “empirical research” in the FTC’s inquiry into whether manufacturer limitations on third-party repairs can thwart consumer protections under the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (see 1903130060).