About 86 percent of the 200 largest e-commerce websites immediately stopped sending marketing emails after customers sent unsubscribe requests, the Online Trust Alliance reported Wednesday. OTA said in a news release that it's a slight improvement over last year, but almost 6 percent, or 11 retailers, didn't honor unsubscribe requests, violating U.S. and Canadian anti-spam laws. "Making the consumer email experience as straightforward as possible, aligning email marketing practices to users’ interests and honoring customer unsubscribe requests is critical to merchants’ online brand reputation and ability to meet regulatory requirements,” said President Craig Spiezle. OTA said it signed up to receive promotional emails from retailers between April and September and analyzed the user experience.

Cisco, Dell, Juniper and seven other IT companies jointly formed the Zero Outage Industry Standard Association (ZOISA) Wednesday in a bid to jump-start an industry-wide discussion on safeguarding IT infrastructure reliability, the companies said. The group plans to develop a zero-outage framework of best practices to improve infrastructure safety and security, they said. The framework also would maximize infrastructure availability and improve industry wide customer satisfaction, the founding firms said. ZOISA's best practices framework will “specify consistent error response times, employee qualification levels and set security and platform requirements,” said a news release. “This can help companies to minimize errors, increase availability, ensure security and operate cost-effectively.”

The founder of Gawker Media, embroiled in four-year legal battle with Hulk Hogan, who sued over the publishing of video excerpts from a sex tape, said in a Wednesday blog post that his company settled with the former wrestler. In March, a Florida jury awarded Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, a $140 million judgment against Gawker. The site's founder Nick Denton wrote he was confident an appeals court would have reduced or eliminated the judgment, but an "all-out legal war" against PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who funded the privacy lawsuit, "would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight." Several media reports pegged the settlement at $31 million. Univision Communications bought Gawker Media Group for $135 million in August after Gawker filed for bankruptcy in June, with Gawker.com being shut down (see 1608180068). This week, Thiel defended the suit, speaking to reporters in Washington (see 1610310051). Our email Wednesday to Bollea's lawyer David Houston wasn't returned.

U.S. digital advertising revenue hit a high of $32.7 billion in the first half of 2016, a 19 percent jump from the same period last year, said the Interactive Advertising Bureau in a Tuesday news release on its latest PwC-prepared internet ad revenue report. For 2Q, ad revenue rose 18 percent to $16.9 billion. Mobile ad revenue was nearly half of the total revenue for the first six months this year -- or about $15.5 billion, up 89 percent from the same period. Within mobile, IAB said smartphone and tablet videos reached $1.6 billion for the period, a 178 percent hike. "Total social media revenues, including mobile and desktop, surged to $7 billion in HY 2016, a 57% rise compared to $4.4 billion in HY 2015," said IAB. "Consumers’ appetite to enjoy media -- in particular video and social media -- on smartphones and tablets provides marketers with the opportunity to connect and interact with their customers while they are on the go, in a very personal environment," said IAB Chief Marketing Officer David Doty.

A Boca Raton, Florida, man pleaded guilty to operating a spam email business, A Whole Lot of Nothing, and profiting from the hacking of email accounts, the DOJ said Thursday. Timothy Livingston, 31, faces up to 10 years in prison on multiple counts of fraud and aggravated identity theft, DOJ said. He's to be sentenced Jan. 27, Justice said. Livingston agreed to pay back more than $1.3 million gained through the spam business since 2011 and forfeit two cars he bought with the revenue, DOJ said. Livingston’s customers included insurance companies and illegal online pharmacies that wanted to send mass advertising emails, Justice said. Livingston admitted in a New Jersey federal court that he hacked into individual email accounts and utilized corporate mail servers to further his spam campaigns.

DMA is renaming itself the Data & Marketing Association, it said on the eve of its 100th anniversary. DMA -- which had stood for Direct Marketing Association -- said it used member feedback and market analysis, plus input from the DMA board, leadership team and OgilvyOne Worldwide to decide on the new name and branding. DMA CEO Tom Benton said: “These steps reaffirm that DMA represents the entire marketing ecosystem of brand marketers, agencies, media companies, data companies and tech companies and is uniquely positioned to protect marketers’ ability to responsibly access, exchange and refine data to improve lives and to grow the U.S. Economy.” DMA also announced the election of new officers and board members: Chairman Michael McLaren, Merkle; Vice Chairwoman Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, Acxiom; Secretary Steve Wagner, Experian; Treasurer Steve Froehlich, ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital; and new board members Kevin Akeroyd, Cision; Luci Rainey, Comcast; and Cory Treffiletti, Oracle Data Cloud.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association identified data localization, internet censorship and other restrictions on online content as significant barriers to digital trade in comments Thursday to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. USTR sought comments on trade barriers as it prepared its national trade estimate (NTE) report. “The Internet has been the single biggest component of the cross-border trade in services, with many of those services facilitating the international goods trade as well,” CCIA said in its filing in docket 2016-0007. "These developments call for maintaining and expanding the NTE’s focus on digital trade barriers." Traditional trade and non-tariff barriers "such as onerous customs procedures and duties for small shipments, postal policies, housing rental and taxi regulations, and outdated financial services regulations should also receive continued attention from USTR," CCIA said.

Five telemarketing companies and three individuals were accused by the FTC of a "worthless money-making" scheme using a purported link to Amazon and a "phony" grants program that bilked debt-laden consumers, seniors and veterans, said the commission in a Friday news release. The commission voted 3-0 to approve the complaint and the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, at the FTC's request, issued a temporary restraining order against the defendants, stopping their operation. The defendants, charged with violating the FTC Act and Telemarketing Sales Rule, are Blue Saguaro Marketing, MarketingWays.com, Max Results Marketing, Oro Canyon Marketing, Paramount Business Services. Individuals named are Stephanie Bateluna, Stacey Vela and Carl Morris Jr. The FTC alleged the telemarketers falsely told consumers they represented Amazon.com and would develop a website for hundreds and thousands of dollars and link it to Amazon. The defendants claimed consumers would "earn thousands of dollars every month in commissions for sales via the website" and also falsely offered to advertise such websites, the commission said. The defendants also claimed to represent the government, offering to help consumers get government and corporate grants within 90 days for paying down debt or medical costs if consumers gave thousands of dollars up front, said the FTC. But it said consumers received no money from the schemes and defendants ignored complaints and provided no refunds. Phone numbers called for a couple of the companies, which were based in Arizona or Nevada, were either busy or no longer in operation. A woman who answered an Arizona number linked to Stephanie Bateluna said no one by that name lived there. Numbers for other companies and individuals couldn't be found.

Yahoo should "understand, communicate and address all aspects" of the 2014 breach of 500 million of the company's user accounts and its email scanning activities (see 1609280050 and 1610200053), said the EU body of data protection commissioners in a letter Friday to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. It also sent a separate letter the previous day to WhatsApp about changes to its privacy policy and terms of service that would permit user data sharing with parent Facebook. Both letters were signed by the Article 29 Working Party Chairman Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who heads France's data protection authority. She said Yahoo also needs to fully cooperate in providing to the DPA commissioners information about the breach, people affected and measures taken. They also asked for information about Yahoo's cooperation with the U.S. government in scanning customer emails, which Falque-Pierrotin called "concerning," questioning whether it's legally justifiable (see 1610050038). "We are aware of the letter from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party and will work to respond as appropriate," emailed a Yahoo spokesman. In the letter to WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum, Falque-Pierrotin said the messaging service's intent to share information with "Facebook family of companies" for advertising, marketing and other purposes is "in contradiction with previous public statements" of both companies (see 1608250027 and 1609070022). The change created "great uncertainty among users and non-users of the service," the group said, and it has "serious concerns" about the way the updated terms of service and privacy policy were given to users. Among other matters, Falque-Pierrotin said WhatsApp needs to provide information about the data collected, where from and who it's shared with so the commissioners can understand whether the data processing complies with EU rules. It also urged WhatsApp "not to proceed with the sharing of users' data until the appropriate legal protections can be assured." Facebook didn't comment.

With consumer trust in artificial intelligence important and issues bound to arise, Information Technology Industry Council CEO Dean Garfield had some advice for lawmakers. "Ask the tough questions," he blogged Thursday, while focusing "on the real risks of real harm, and not solely the 'what-ifs,' because that could cut this technology off at its knees. We must consider what societal benefits we would give up if we were to unnecessarily restrict these technologies." Garfield acknowledged that "with any technology -- especially emerging technologies -- accidents and mistakes can and will likely happen." Industry executives acknowledge much of what Garfield wrote and believe consumer confidence is important, he said.