Amazon started refunding more than $70 million to consumers who were illegally charged for in-app purchases made by children who didn't have parents’ informed consent, the FTC announced Tuesday. The commission and the company announced in early April they agreed to end litigation (see 1704040052) after a federal judge last year granted a summary judgment to the FTC (see 1604270013). The agency said eligible consumers who incurred such unauthorized charges between November 2011 and May 2016 should have received an email from Amazon, but other consumers can go to the company's website or log in to their account. Deadline for submitting refund requests is May 28, 2018.

President Donald Trump nominated Karen Dunn Kelley, senior managing director-investments at Invesco, to be undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs. She was nominated Thursday for the post that was held by Justin Antonipillai, who co-led negotiations on Privacy Shield from 2013-16. The trans-Atlantic agreement is approaching its first required review in September (see 1704200034). Dunn joined Invesco in 1989, according to the company's profile.

The smart home industry is stuck in a holding pattern between early adopters and the mass market, and optimistic industry watchers hope that voice control led by Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant tips the market to mainstream, a Parks Associates conference in Burlingame, California, was told Tuesday. Voice control could be a benign Trojan horse into consumers’ lives for the smart home industry, some hope. Comfort levels vary in how far consumers trust a digital assistant, said Parks CEO Tricia Parks and others. Mike Buckingham, director-business development at August Home, asked, “How do these products all come together?” Voice is exciting to all, said Martin Heckmann, director-emerging business at garage door control company Chamberlain: There aren’t enough “robust” voice control experiences today to provide a “full suite of use cases to consumers as it relates to security.” Honeywell Vice President-IoT Partner Programs Scott Harkins said voice is “key” to smart home success. Getting to conversational voice is “critical,” he said. Voice control also could be a stopgap to doing away with user interfaces, said Parks analyst Tom Kerber.

Smart home services company Vivint sees signs of industry acceleration, said Matt Eyring, chief strategy and innovation officer, during a keynote at a Parks Associates conference Wednesday in Burlingame, California. Vivint has been doing in-home and phone-based sales to explain to consumers what smart home can do for them, now also with a Best Buy partnership, he said. At this point in smart home awareness, which Parks pegs at 30 percent of broadband households, companies need consultative selling, Eyring said. He compared his company's partnership with Citizens Bank giving consumers options to pay for smart home features to the model of buying a smartphone: “The iPhone was a business model innovation as much as it was a product innovation, which was getting a supercomputer into your pocket for $100 a month, and not $1,500 upfront.”

Acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said Wednesday she wants the agency to take a "fresh look" at identity theft to improve efforts to tackle the problem. During a daylong FTC event, Ohlhausen said she wants the agency to do more research on the issue, with assistance from academia, consumer advocates, industry and governments, to provide a foundation that addresses harmful conduct. She said the FTC needs to share information and coordinate cybersecurity efforts with other agencies and state governments. She noted the agency's work with the Small Business Administration to launch a website to help companies deal with cyberthreats and data breaches. Ohlhausen wants more public-private partnerships and cited FTC work with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to make it easier for consumers to get free credit reports. FTC economist Keith Anderson cited 2014 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that said 17.6 million Americans 16 and older were ID theft victims. He said synthetic ID theft is a recent trend, in which thieves construct a "pseudo individual" using information from several people. Sean McCleskey, a retired Secret Service agent who works for the University of Texas-Austin's Center for Identity, said thieves take "bits and pieces" of data -- maybe a fake date of birth, a real Social Security number, or a real or fake address -- making it more difficult to investigate and to notify potential victims. Experts said thieves steal people's credit card and financial information and medical and tax data. Danny Rogers, CEO of Terbium Labs, said ID theft undermines trust in the internet.

Shifting the smart home buyer to mass-market consumers, creating increased interoperability among devices, and monetizing data are challenges, said panelists at Parks Associates' Connections conference Tuesday in Burlingame, California. About a tenth of consumer tech products today have some degree of connectivity, said Parks analyst Tom Kerber. Product ecosystems “need to be more open” to products and applications that provide a “seamless user experience,” said Kerber. Safety and security continue driving consumer interest in smart home adoption, said Parks analyst Brad Russell. About a quarter of all U.S. broadband households own at least one smart home device, Russell said, but only 12 percent own a smart home system. More than 442 million connected consumer devices will be sold in the U.S. in 2020, said Parks data released Tuesday.

Facebook's standards for reviewing online material worldwide, especially bullying, hate speech and terrorism, are "challenging and essential," and broad and complex, wrote Monika Bickert, head of the company's Global Policy Management, in a Tuesday blog post. Responding quickly to millions of reports is hard but so is understanding context, she said. "Someone posts a graphic video of a terrorist attack. Will it inspire people to emulate the violence, or speak out against it? Someone posts a joke about suicide. Are they just being themselves, or is it a cry for help?" She said the company talks with experts about such issues and sometimes policies can seem "counterintuitive." Experts advise leaving live videos of people threatening suicide so assistance can be rendered but then taking them down to prevent copycats, she said. In training reviewers, Facebook uses "intentionally extreme" hypothetical cases to deal with the most problematic situations, Bickert said. "We face criticism from people who want more censorship and people who want less. We see that as a useful signal that we are not leaning too far in any one direction."

Amid concerns about security vulnerabilities for children's products, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who co-founded the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus last year, is asking acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen for information about whether legislation protecting children's data needs to be updated and if the commission needs additional authority to regulate industry's handling of kids' online data. In a Monday letter to Ohlhausen, Warner said he's worried children's protections aren't keeping pace with consumer and tech trends, particularly security vulnerabilities with devices and the transmission and storage of data collected by the devices. "Reports of your statements casting these risks as merely speculative -- and dismissing consumer harms that don’t pose 'monetary injury or unwarranted health and safety risks' -- only deepen my concerns," he wrote. Warner cited the alleged data breach reported by several media outlets in February of Spiral Toys' CloudPets products, which uses an app to record and send messages to the toy, and a complaint filed with the FTC against the "My Friend Cayla" doll that can be hacked (see 1703220045 and 1612190051). Warner wants answers to questions about whether industry is complying with Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act standards, if the commission can require companies to recall defective products, the latest FTC guidance or action on the CloudPets and Cayla products, and why Ohlhausen believes IoT device insecurities have yet to materialize or why the private sector is better equipped to address such problems. An FTC spokeswoman acknowledged receipt of Warner's letter but didn't comment beyond that.

The recent WannaCry ransomware attack underscores questions about providing software and hardware patches, who has the responsibility for installing them and the role of high-level executives in organizations for understanding and appropriately investing in cybersecurity (see 1705150008, 1705160038 and 1705180032), said FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny in an interview on C-SPAN that was slated to be televised over the weekend on The Communicators. The commissioner discussed the agency's role in providing guidance for organizations and individuals to protect against such threats, and its enforcement role if organizations don't adequately protect consumer data. McSweeny noted the FTC's role in an expanded interconnected ecosystem that includes wearables, home devices like smart TVs and cars and efforts to give consumers a say in whether their personal data should be collected. The FTC, she said, needs additional resources and technologists to keep pace with evolving technology, how the tech works and how new uses could harm consumers. McSweeny, a Democrat, said the FCC's push to undo the open internet order (see 1705180029) could tilt the playing field toward a few large broadband providers that may want to prioritize their own content at the expense of small, entrepreneurial players. She seemed hopeful the recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to rehear the agency's case against AT&T Mobility (see 1705100063) will "fix an error" made by a three-judge panel that effectively removed the FTC's oversight of broadband providers. She said Congress needs to clarify the commission's jurisdiction in this area (see 1705190053).

TDK completed its acquisition of InvenSense for $1.3 billion cash, the two companies announced Thursday. “Sensors are viewed as an important IoT-enabling technology, and sensor products and the technology portfolio of TDK will expand dramatically as a result of its acquisition." TDK will run InvenSense as a subsidiary and keep its management intact, they said.