Facebook is strengthening efforts to ban "cloaking" that bypasses the company's review processes to show content in violation of community standards and advertising policies, blogged Product Management Director Rob Leathern and Software Engineer Bobbie Chang Wednesday. "Cloaked destination pages, which frequently include diet pills, pornography and muscle building scams, create negative and disruptive experiences." Cloakers create web pages with links that take Facebook reviewers to websites that comply with company policies, but users are taken to malicious or misleading sites. Leathern and Change said Facebook has taken down "thousands of these offenders" through artificial intelligence and expanded human reviews. They said the company will closely collaborate with industry and ban such advertisers and pages.

Google "strongly" supports employees' rights to express themselves, CEO Sundar Pichai said, but a now-fired engineer's 10-page document circulated inside the company violated its code of conduct, "advancing harmful gender stereotypes." Pichai's Monday note made public Tuesday didn't mention the document's author, James Damore, reportedly fired Monday. "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive," said Pichai. But he said employees, "especially those with a minority viewpoint," shouldn't be afraid of expressing their views and the company needs to find a way to debate issues without violating the code of conduct. Pichai said he was cutting a vacation short to discuss the issue. Contact information for Damore couldn't be found.

Faster broadband and widespread adoption of connected devices helped fuel 136 percent growth in the “cumulative number” of global children’s VOD services to 175 in 2016 from 2012, said IHS Markit in a Monday report. “An increase in original exclusive online content, ease of online payment, and the offer of a secure environment for age-appropriate content have further encouraged the uptake of on-demand content.” Children’s VOD services are booming in number, “with traditional linear broadcasters reaching their audiences online and a wave of new players led by Amazon, Netflix and YouTube competing for eyeballs,” it said. “Children do not have the same ingrained loyalty to existing media brands as older viewers, so it is not just a battle for today’s under-12 audience but also about establishing awareness among future consumers.” About 90 percent of the services are accessible on mobile devices, including a third of the services accessible only on a smartphone or tablet, it said: “The smartphone-fueled emergence of app stores has led to a new wave of subscription services. Besides the ability to offer a protected environment for young children, they can be rolled out internationally more quickly and at a fraction of the cost of linear TV channels.”

The Center for Democracy & Technology said AnchorFree's virtual private network service violates promises of protecting users' data security, collection and sharing practices and wants the FTC to investigate, said a Monday complaint. An FTC spokeswoman said it received the complaint. CDT alleged the company's Hotspot Shield Free Virtual Private Network (VPN) product privacy policy said it doesn't keep a log of users' online activity and personal information and doesn't track or sell such information. But CDT said Hotspot Shield "regularly" collects users' IP addresses, unique device identifiers and other data, and monitors their browsing habits when the VPN is in use. CDT said the service deploys persistent cookies "and concedes that it works with unaffiliated entities to customize advertising and marketing messages," despite claiming browsing and other similar data are "cleared" after VPN sessions close. The complaint alleged Hotspot Shield connected advertisers to frequent, unique visitors to business, finance, retail and travel websites, giving advertisers access to customers' IP addresses and device identifiers. CDT wants the FTC to order the company to stop misrepresentations, provide clearer statements, implement a comprehensive security and privacy program and offer customer refunds. AnchorFree didn't comment.

A federal court temporarily stopped an online marketing operations and froze its assets after the FTC alleged multiple defendants lured consumers, in some cases, with names of well known companies, and then charged them a monthly subscription for tooth whiteners and other products, said the commission in a Monday news release. It voted 2-0 to file the complaint. The U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada entered the temporary restraining order July 25. The FTC named more than 60 defendants in the complaint, which said they used a network of 78 companies and at least 87 websites and dozens of bank accounts to hide and launder profits. The defendants drove consumers to websites via different means including "emails inviting them to fill out surveys falsely claiming to be for well-known merchants such as Kohl’s and Amazon," with the promise of a reward for finishing a survey, the agency said. Consumers thought they were ordering a trial offer for $1.03 plus shipping costs, but then were charged at least $100 monthly if they didn't cancel within eight days, said the FTC. The complaint called the scam "negative option marketing," which treats a consumer's silence when given the option of canceling an offer "as consent for being charged for goods or services." A message seeking comment was left with one defendant, Nevada-based RoadRunner B2C, and another, Flat Iron Avenue, had an inoperable phone number. Contact information of several others couldn't be found.

Tesla is “on track” to complete its first “coast-to-coast” autonomous drive from Los Angeles to New York by year-end, said CEO Elon Musk on a Wednesday earnings call. Tesla’s autonomous-driving platform, Autopilot, is “very centrally about vision and image recognition,” using “effectively narrow” artificial intelligence, said Musk. Every car the company made since October “is capable of full autonomy,” using Autopilot, he said. Tesla’s website describes Autopilot as enabling safe, “full self-driving capability."

Fitbit shares closed up 15 percent Thursday to $5.84 after the company raised full-year guidance to reflect what CEO James Park called a first-half “upside." Park said on a Q2 earnings call Wednesday that the company is “executing according to our transition plan.” Demand and sell-in for connected health and fitness trackers were better than forecast, up 14 percent sequentially, he said. Revenue in Q2 fell to $353 million from $587 million in the year-ago quarter on sales of 3.4 million devices, said Park. Fitbit has sold some 67 million devices to date, he said, calling devices “a means to an end" in Fitbit’s “firm vision for the future.” The company's smartwatch will combine features “not yet seen in a smartwatch,” he said, seeing a $10 billion addressable market. It's the company's first product based on the IP and staff from recently acquired Pebble, he said: Fitbit sees a “blurring of lines” between trackers and smartwatches occurring over time.

The Office of Personnel Management has taken steps to implement 19 recommendations to strengthen its security policies, practices and controls after the 2015 breach of sensitive records of 21 million people (see 1506050042), but eight recommendations remain pending, said a Thursday GAO report. OPM hasn't encrypted stored or transmitted data for some high-value systems, said GAO. "Until OPM completes implementation of government-wide requirements, its systems are at greater risk than they need be." The report also faulted lack of comprehensive testing of procedures for overseeing security of contractor-operated systems.

Big companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google exist because customers like them and government efforts to break them up would be detrimental to users, blogged Mark Jamison, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow and former member of the Trump FCC transition team. Responding to a new strategy from Senate Democrats about corporate influence over competition, consumer choice and workers' bargaining rights (see 1707240067), Jamison countered that big companies attract competitors and have other positive impacts, and actions to break them up would hamper their business models and hurt customers. Besides, he said, "government attacks" won't alter the underlying economics, which give rise to these big companies.

The Massachusetts-based Industrial Internet Consortium and China-based Edge Computing Consortium signed a memorandum of understanding to advance interoperability and portability of the industrial IoT, said a joint Wednesday news release. Activities will include identifying and sharing industrial IoT best practices, developing test beds and R&D projects, and working on standardization. The groups said they will meet Aug. 30 in Beijing.