An Information Technology Industry Council division is pleased with a White House report released Wednesday that outlines recommendations for modernizing outdated federal IT systems. In a Thursday statement, Trey Hodgkins, senior vice president-public sector for the IT Alliance for Public Sector, said after administration officials met with tech company CEOs in June (see 1706200017 and 1706220054), industry experts developed "ambitious recommendations for the government to modernize its computer systems, adopt new technologies, and strengthen its cybersecurity capabilities." He said industry will offer those recommendations in early September after reviewing the White House report. The administration is seeking input before Sept. 20.

Qualcomm Technologies joined the IoT Cybersecurity Alliance formed earlier this year (see 1702080045) by AT&T, IBM, Nokia, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec and Trustonic, said the Qualcomm subsidiary in a Wednesday news release.

The Online Trust Alliance said additional improvements are needed in an anti-spam law, in comments to the FTC, which is seeking input on the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (Can-Spam) Act by Thursday (see 1706220013). OTA, an Internet Society initiative, said the law and business self-regulation have slowed spam growth and recommended changes without imposing extra costs for organizations. They include providing additional examples about the placement, color, size and terminology of the opt-out option; enabling consumers to opt out of multiple mail streams through one request; specifying the "from" line in an email since email headers or mass email services have many "from" addresses; clarifying new types of "informational" messages like alerts about news, product updates and site activity; and giving opt-out lists a "lifetime e.g., 5 years), after which the names must be purged from the system" but not subject to enforcement unless a customer relationship is restarted. OTA Director Jeff Wilbur said in a news release its recent audit found 94 percent of top retailers honored an unsubscribe request within three business days. Companies including Act-On Software, American Greetings, LashBack, Optizmo, PeopleConnect, PostUp, ValiMail and Yes Lifecycle Marketing contributed to OTA's comments. Nearly 80 people, including University of California, Berkeley School of Law adjunct law professor and FTC expert Chris Hoofnagle, have filed comments in Project No. R711010. Hoofnagle said there's a continuing need for the Can-Spam rule and the technical interventions can reduce spam.

Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana voice engines will be able to communicate later this year, the companies announced Wednesday. Consumers can tell Alexa to “open Cortana” or tell a Windows 10 device to open Alexa, they said. Alexa users will be able to access Cortana to book a meeting, access a calendar or read work email through Office 365 integration, said the companies. Cortana customers will be able to ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon and interact with Alexa skills built by third-party developers, they said. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos cited a “big” and “multifaceted” world, saying there will be “multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas.” Together, their strengths “will complement each other” and create richer and “more helpful” experiences, Bezos said.

TaxSlayer settled FTC allegations hackers gained access to nearly 9,000 accounts for part of 2015, allowing them to file fraudulent tax returns, said a Tuesday agency news release. Commissioners voted 2-0 and comments are due Sept. 29. The FTC said TaxSlayer violated Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act rules requiring financial institutions to protect customer data and deliver privacy notices to customers. The company failed to implement adequate authentication measures and didn't require customers to choose strong passwords, said the commission. It mustn't violate those rules for 20 years. A TaxSlayer spokeswoman said the company, among others, "was the object of a list validation attack" that targeted less than 1 percent of its users. The company "self-reported the attack to the IRS and took immediate remediation efforts that have become standardized in response to such attacks," she said. TaxSlayer has increased security measures, imposed stricter authentication and is a participant in the IRS's Security Summit that develops industry protections for taxpayer information, she added.

A federal court found Terrason Spinks and his Jet Processing liable for more than $280 million in an internet scam the FTC alleged made millions by "luring" customers into paying for government grant and money-making schemes and memberships they never enrolled in, said an agency Tuesday news release. The District Court for the District of Nevada ruled Aug. 18 after a bench trial, with the order released Thursday. The FTC said nine other individuals and dozens of corporations previously settled in the case that dates to 2010 when the commission lodged the complaints. Spinks and his company are banned from selling grant and money-making products, the release said. Contact information for the defendants couldn't be found.

Reversing a policy instituted in November, Uber will again give riders the option of whether to allow the company to track their location data after they're dropped off, which drew praise from Senate Privacy, Technology and the Law Subcommittee ranking member Al Franken, D-Minn., who criticized the practice (see 1612210039). An Uber spokeswoman said Tuesday riders told the company last year's policy change, which sought to improve user experience, "missed the mark." She said Uber is trying to "make things right" with the reversal. Post-trip collection is suspended for iOS and Android systems, and the new settings will appear in the next few weeks for iOS users, which gives them three options: always have Uber collect location information, do so only while using the app or disable location services altogether. Franken urged the company in December to rethink its policy. He now said Americans have a basic privacy right and "deserve a meaningful opportunity to decide for themselves the fate of their personal data." Two weeks ago, the company settled with the FTC over privacy and security allegations (see 1708150010).

Consumers who bought tech support products and services April 2012-November 2014 through an alleged tech support scheme have until Oct. 27 to submit a request for a partial refund, said an FTC Monday news release. Last year, Florida-based Inbound Call Experts paid $10 million to settle FTC allegations the firm deceived hundreds of thousands of consumers (see 1612220024).

Customs and Border Protection is starting a Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee Emerging Technologies Working Group that will examine the technology underpinning virtual currencies, acting CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said during a COAC meeting last week in San Diego. "Initially, one of the things that this working group will tackle is the emerging field of blockchain and how that applies to global supply chains," he said. It's a "technology that we think could be very promising for harmonizing key aspects of the global supply chain as we move goods across multiple borders."

The First Amendment constrains what government can do to limit free speech, but it doesn't put any such restrictions on companies like GoDaddy, Google and Twitter that refused to host the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer (see 1708180005, 1708150001 and 1708140044) or share advertising revenue with "hateful videos" after the Charlottesville, Virginia, protests, blogged American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Daniel Lyons Friday. "And this is exactly as it should be," he wrote. "Absent some contractual provision to the contrary, companies should not be compelled to carry speech with which they disagree." Others said such actions have "somewhat disrupted the net neutrality narrative," said Lyons. But Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act not only shields service providers and ISPs from content written by others, it also protects the providers if they restrict access to material they find offensive, he added.