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.

NTIA scheduled its next multistakeholder meeting on IoT security upgradeability and patching for Sept. 12 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., said a Federal Register Tuesday notice. Participants have been meeting since October to draft guidance on consumer outreach and communications and ways to incentivize companies to make IoT software upgrades (see 1610190051 and 1707180006). The meeting will be at the American Institute of Architects, 1735 New York Ave. NW.

TrustArc's proposed modifications to its safe harbor program under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act rule were approved 2-0, the FTC said in a Monday news release. COPPA bars companies that operate websites and provide online services from "knowingly" collecting personal data from children under 13 unless the companies get parental consent before collecting, using or disclosing such information. The statute also requires them to post comprehensive privacy policies. Under the safe harbor provision, organizations can get their self-regulatory guidelines approved by the FTC if they implement the same or greater protections as those in COPPA. Those organizations still will be subject to commission review and discipline in the safe harbor's guidelines "in lieu of formal FTC investigation and law enforcement," said the release. The agency received six comments in May on the modifications (see 1704190028), which include "a new requirement that participants conduct an annual internal assessment of third-parties’ collection of personal information from children on their websites or online services." TRUSTe changed its name to TrustArc in June.

Tech will consume a bigger share of back-to-school spending, projected at $19.9 billion for this season, said a Thursday CEA report saying 63 percent of Americans have technology on their school shopping lists, up 4 percentage points from last year. Six of the top 10 tech back-to-school shopping list items are accessories, said Steve Koenig, senior director-market research, citing high attachment rates for computing products. Leading tech on school shopping lists are portable memory, calculators, headphones, laptop PCs, software or subscriptions, carrying or protective cases, portable power, wireless mice and keyboards, tablets and smartphones, said CTA. Some 88 percent of back-to-school shoppers plan to buy at a brick-and-mortar mass merchant store, 56 percent at a physical office supply store and 44 percent online, it said. The report was based on June survey findings from 1,007 U.S. adults ages 18 or older.

Test miles of autonomous vehicles plus “quality of the miles" spells “validation,” said General Motors CEO Mary Barra on an earnings call. “To our knowledge, we're the only one testing our autonomous vehicles in downtown San Francisco, which is a pretty dense urban environment with a lot more, I'll say, opportunities to learn from different situations,” said Barra in Q&A Tuesday. “There's quite a bit of work we're doing, even with agencies or groups outside of the company, to put that together.” Under last fall's autonomous-driving report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (see 1609200039), “a big portion of the guidelines they've put out” is for automakers to “demonstrate how you're measuring” self-driving progress and performance, “and then share that” data with industry and government as NHTSA looks at “authorizing, pulling the driver out of the vehicle,” she said. “It's much more involved than just miles traveled.” Lyft's plans to start its own autonomous-driving research won’t affect their self-driving alliance (see 1601040068), Barra said. GM's efforts without Lyft are "quite far along,” she said. GM sees “opportunity to deploy” self-driving cars via ride hailing, she said. "That's in the early stages of sub-deployment."