Walmart ditched its Amazon Prime-like ShippingPass membership program (see 1606290078) after less than a year and is refunding customers in full for their subscription, it said on its website Tuesday. “In today's world of e-commerce, two-day free shipping is table stakes. It no longer makes sense to charge for it,” said Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, in a statement. Walmart replaced the membership-based shipping program with another Amazon-like perk: free two-day shipping. But Walmart’s two-day ship offer -- on more than 2 million products -- has a $35 minimum spend and no membership fee. On the website, Walmart thanked ShippingPass customers for "helping us develop our new 2-day shipping offer." Refunds will be automatically issued to the original form of payment within 30 days, Walmart said. Lore said the new shipping program is “the first of many moves” the retailer will make to improve the customer experience and promote growth. Free shipping applies to items customers shop the most, it said, including baby necessities, pet products, food, cereal and peanut butter, cleaning supplies, beauty products, top electronics and toys.

The FTC said it granted an early termination of the premerger notification waiting period for Oracle’s buy of internet traffic service Dyn, allowing the deal to proceed. The Hart-Scott-Rodino Act requires companies engaged in large mergers and acquisitions to submit to a waiting period during which DOJ and the FTC can review the deal for antitrust issues, the commission said. Oracle said in November it planned to buy Dyn in a bid to extend its cloud computing platform (see 1611210047). Dyn's DynDNS service experienced distributed denial-of-service attacks in October that resulted in outages or latency for many major websites in the U.S., including Netflix and Twitter (see 1610260067 and 1611160051). Oracle didn’t comment Tuesday.

More than one-third of surveyed entities that experienced a cyber breach in 2016 reported revenue losses of more than 20 percent, Cisco reported. More than 50 percent of organizations that experienced a data breach faced public scrutiny as a result, it said Tuesday. Cisco said it surveyed almost 3,000 organizations' chief security officers and security operations leaders. Ninety percent of surveyed organizations that reported significant losses due to breaches said they're now improving their cyberthreat defenses, technologies and processes, including security awareness training for employees and implementing cyber risk mitigation techniques. Cisco found that organizations investigated only 56 percent of security alerts and remediated less than half of the legitimate alerts. “In 2017, cyber is business, and business is cyber -- that requires a different conversation, and very different outcomes,” said Chief Security and Trust Officer John Stewart in a news release. “Relentless improvement is required and that should be measured via efficacy, cost, and well managed risk.”

Twenty-seven percent of internet users in 17 countries said they’re willing to share personal data in exchange for benefits or rewards such as lower costs or personalized service, GfK reported Friday. Those ages 30-40 are most likely to share data such as health, financial, driving records or energy use for rewards, with China (38 percent), Mexico (30 percent) and Russia (29 percent) topping the list. U.S. respondents skewed slightly lower at 25 percent willing to share data (23 percent who disagreed with the statement). Germany (40 percent), France (37 percent) and Brazil (34 percent) have the most internet users unwilling to share data for rewards, the report said. GfK interviewed more than 22,000 consumers ages 15 and older online last summer.

As part of Saturday's Data Privacy Day, the Information Technology Industry Council released 10 principles on privacy and security, freedom of expression and openness for policymakers globally. ITI President Dean Garfield said in a Friday news release the controversy over encryption and counterterrorism has deteriorated into a "simplistic debate of security versus privacy," which he called a "false choice." The principles ask policymakers to: prioritize privacy and security; promote encryption and other robust cybersecurity and data protection methods; respect privacy and free expression as essential values; support policies and practices to enable trust in the tech sector; foster collaboration among private and public stakeholders; increase technical expertise within governments; and help governments investigate crimes that require access to electronic evidence in other countries.

More than 60 civil liberties, industry and privacy groups and tech companies are urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., to advance the Email Privacy Act, which closes a loophole that gives law enforcement agencies access to people's emails without a warrant after 180 days. In a Monday letter, the coalition -- which includes the Center for Democracy & Technology, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Facebook, Google and U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- said HR-387 (see 1701090017), which would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, not only ends the 180-day rule but also rejects DOJ's "interpretation of ECPA that the act of opening an email removes it from warrant protection." The bill's passage would ratify a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that email content is protected by the Fourth Amendment (see 1511300009) and the government needs a probable cause warrant, the letter said. It also reflects current DOJ and FBI practices, the groups added. Last year, the House unanimously approved an identical bill that died in the Senate Judiciary Committee (see 1606090007). The bill doesn't include everything the coalition wanted, but it said the groups are pleased that civil agencies -- such as the SEC -- that wanted to be exempted from the legislation don't get a carve out (see 1512030036). The committee should advance it without any amendments that would weaken protections, the letter said.

Facebook revamped a tutorial aimed at helping users better understand and enhance their privacy and security on its website. In a Thursday news release, the company said the "Privacy Basics" site, which provides 32 interactive guides in 44 languages, can help users quickly find information about privacy topics such as who can see their photos, comments and friends, plus tips and tools like managing privacy settings, advertising and security. "This is part of Facebook’s overall effort to make sure you have all the information you need to share what you want with only the people you want to see it," said Facebook. The improvements are part of the annual Data Privacy Day, on Saturday. In a separate announcement, Facebook said it also improved which videos will be presented on the site's news feed based on viewer engagement. Product Manager Abhishek Bapna and Research Scientist Seyoung Park wrote in a blog post the company will consider "percent completion" of a video. "If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling -- and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one," they wrote. They said they don't expect significant changes in distribution, but longer videos may get a slight bump while shorter videos a slight decrease. The change will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Thursday against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in a push for publication of U.S. intelligence agencies’ classified report on Russia’s involvement the hacking of IT systems aimed at influencing the 2016 presidential election. The intelligence agencies released an unclassified version of the report earlier this month (see 1701060060). EPIC filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. "There is an urgent need to make available to the public the Complete ODNI Assessment to fully assess the Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential election and to prevent future attacks in democratic institutions,” EPIC said in its complaint (in Pacer). EPIC said it filed a FOIA request with ODNI Jan. 9, which the office needed to respond to within the required 10 days. ODNI didn’t comment.

The Future of Privacy Forum and National Automobile Dealers Association released a guide Thursday aimed at helping consumers understand the kinds of personal information collected by vehicles with newer technologies. It's "a critical step in communicating to consumers the importance of privacy in the connected car, as well as the benefits that car data can provide,” said FPF CEO Jules Polonetsky in a news release. NADA President Peter Welch said many consumers aren't aware their connected car is continually collecting personal data. Most cars already have event data recorders and on-board diagnostic ports that collect technical data about vehicles. Newer technologies on vehicles may: track location and destination information; gather data about road or weather conditions and traffic or record information about vehicle occupants through cameras, mics and sensors; use biometrics to identify drivers; and provide third-party music or phone apps, which may collect data, the guide said. It said almost all automakers follow industry privacy practices, which became effective with 2017 model vehicles. Auto associations including Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and Global Automakers also are supporting the guide, the release said.

Google took down 1.7 billion advertisements that violated its advertising policies in 2016, double the amount from the previous year, the company said in a Wednesday blog post. Google caught more by expanding its policies, including to cover payday loan ads, and by upgrading detection technology. Last year, the enhanced technology found and disabled 112 million “trick-to-click” promotions that often appear as system warnings to deceive customers, Google said. The web firm said it disabled more than 68 million bad ads for healthcare violations in 2016, up from 12.5 million the year before. Google took down 17 million ads for illegal gambling and about 80 million ads that deceived, misled or shocked users, it said. Google said it took down 23,000 “self-clicking” mobile ads that automatically download an app without the user tapping anything. The company removed about 7 million ads that intentionally tried to trick Google’s detection systems and suspended 1,300 accounts that cloaked their ads as news, it said. Google took action against 47,000 sites for promoting weight-loss scams, 15,000 sites for unwanted software and 6,000 sites and 6,000 accounts for advertising counterfeit goods, it said. The company said it disabled 900,000 ads for containing malware.