Internet connections nationwide climbed 9 percent year over year to 342 million in June 2015, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Friday in an August report. Most growth came from a rise in mobile subscriptions, it said. During the one-year period, U.S. mobile internet connections increased 12 percent to 242 million in June 2015, the bureau said. The number of fixed connections increased 4 percent to 100 million total, it said. About 37.5 percent of fixed connections had downstream speeds between 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps, it said. But 62.6 percent were slower than that, including 6.8 percent with speeds slower than 3 Mbps. The median downstream speed of all reported fixed connections was 24 Mbps and the median upstream speed was 3 Mbps, it said. For mobile connections, the FCC found that 25.8 percent had speeds higher than 6 Mbps, 27.8 percent had speeds between 3 and 6 Mbps, 27.6 percent had speeds between 1 and 3 Mbps and the remaining 19.2 percent had speeds below 1 Mbps. The report looks at carrier data reported in Form 477 and defines a connection as having a speed of 200 kbps in at least one direction.

Nearly half of Americans polled said they were victimized by an online scam or had their credit card information or identity stolen, leading a majority to say the internet has become less safe, said a Digital Citizens Alliance survey report released Thursday. In the July 27-29 online survey of 1,215 Americans, 46 percent said they were defrauded or had their financial and personal data stolen, with one in three reporting a monetary loss. As a result, 52 percent said they felt the internet was less safe than five years ago, with only 12 percent saying it was more safe, the survey found. It said 71 percent want tougher federal and state laws against online criminals. "It's a bad sign when Americans think the internet is becoming less safe, so it's vital that governmental entities such as the Federal Trade Commission and others ensure that crime does not pay," said Tom Galvin, the group's executive director, in a news release. The survey also said 69 percent reported finding malware on their computers, and 42 percent said their credit card information was stolen and used. Plus, one in five reported either their computer or company's systems had been hacked at some time, the survey said. Vrge Analytics conducted the survey, with a margin of error of 4 percent.

Facebook will flag phrases frequently used in click-bait headlines to reduce the amount of spam or number of misleading stories appearing in users’ news feeds, the social network said in a news release Thursday. It listed as one example of a click-bait headline, “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe.” To root out such stories, the company “categorized tens of thousands of headlines as clickbait by considering two key points: (1) if the headline withholds information required to understand what the content of the article is; and (2) if the headline exaggerates the article to create misleading expectations for the reader,” the company said. “A team at Facebook reviewed thousands of headlines using these criteria, validating each other’s work to identify a large set of clickbait headlines. From there, we built a system that looks at the set of clickbait headlines to determine what phrases are commonly used in clickbait headlines that are not used in other headlines.” Facebook previously tried to reduce click-bait in 2014 by removing posts to content where clickers spent little time before returning to the social media site. More recently, the company tweaked its news feed algorithm to favor content posted by family and friends (see 1606290066). Also, Facebook faced pressure in recent months over allegations it suppressed conservative viewpoints in the trending topics of its news feed (see 1605100032 and 1605170068).

Despite efforts to curb bullying, harassment and threats on social media, such behavior hasn't gone down much over the past two years, said a survey of 1,017 adults released Thursday by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Rad Campaign and Lincoln Park Strategies. Overall, 22 percent say they experienced harassment in 2016, down from 25 percent in 2014, said a news release. But the survey found online sexual harassment declined by almost half to 27 percent of people this year, while online political harassment nearly doubled to 30 percent of respondents in 2016. Seventy-two percent of millennials are harassed by someone they know and 63 percent of online harassment occurs on Facebook, the survey said. "Clearly we need to institute better tools, algorithms, and policies to support and empower people online, such as better methods for reporting harassment, as well as more effective and timely responses from the social networks themselves," said Rad Campaign's Allyson Kapin, a social media consultant.

Tesla “cannot sneeze without there being a national headline” about autonomous vehicles, said CEO Elon Musk in an earnings Q&A. He was asked whether the company, in order to build public support for self-driving cars, plans to be more “transparent” in its reporting of autonomous-vehicle incidents, such as the highly publicized fatal accident in Florida involving a Tesla Model S in autopilot mode (see 1607010052). Tesla as a standard practice shares its autonomous-vehicle incident data with regulators “as soon as we know it,” as it did in the Florida fatality “certainly weeks before” the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration opened a formal probe into the crash, he said. “We're not totally clear on why they opened the investigation, because they actually had all the information before they made a formal investigation.” Tesla thinks “there wasn't really anything more to learn” from opening a formal probe, he said. NHTSA representatives didn’t comment Thursday. "Full autonomy is going to come a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks it will,” said Musk. It’s just “really a software limitation” that’s standing in the way of developing cars with “full autonomy,” Musk said.

NTIA is awaiting ICANN's report on the status of its implementation​ of governance and technical work related to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition as the agency evaluates whether the transition can proceed as planned, NTIA said in a report to Congress released Thursday. ICANN's report, due Aug. 12, will help NTIA assess “whether ICANN can complete all of the transition-related planning work” prior to the current Sept. 30 end-date for NTIA's current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions, the agency said. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling told Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and four other GOP senators in late June that the agency sees “no tangible benefit” to seeking a delay of the transition absent a request from ICANN (see 1606280062).

Harman joined the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC), it said in a Wednesday news release. The group collaborates to share, track and analyze intelligence about cyberthreats and potential vulnerabilities against connected cars, and Harman said members represent almost all makers of North American light-duty vehicles. Harman reinforced its commitment to protective cybersecurity measures, highlighting its automotive security frameworks and its acquisition of TowerSec in January.

The biometric market is shifting away from consumer electronics and toward banking technologies that appeal to millennials, but “significant challenges” loom, said an ABI report Wednesday. Startups and payment card players are integrating biometrics into mobile payment services, smart cards and ATMs to improve banking security and authentication through innovative form factors, and the market shift is occurring faster than expected, said analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis. Global revenue for biometric banking technology is forecast to pass $4 billion by 2021, he said.

Most native ads that appeared on the top 100 news websites failed to properly disclose advertising content that resembled editorial stories, said the Online Trust Alliance in a study released Wednesday. Of the sites, OTA said 69 percent had one or more native ads on their home pages. Of those sites with native ads, 71 percent failed to use words like "ad, paid or sponsored by" to disclose they were promotions, made the visibility and readability of those words difficult and/or didn't visually enough set the paid content apart from editorial content. OTA said 20 percent of the native ads needed improvement while only 9 percent met or exceeded transparency requirements. The group listed the websites that were analyzed but didn't indicate which ones failed, needed improvement and passed, though it cited a "noteworthy example" on the Wall Street Journal's home page of transparency. OTA Executive Director Craig Spiezle said in a news release that sites might gain financially in the short run by failing to disclose ads but risk their long-term reputations. “Consumers who experience annoyance, confusion and misinterpretation in native advertising, combined with increasing security and privacy issues will likely turn to using ad blockers. The result is nobody wins since sites and ad networks will lose revenue and consumers will miss out on content that is relevant to them," he said. OTA provided a checklist to help sites provide native ads without confusing readers. In December, the FTC released guidelines to protect consumers from intentionally misleading native online commercial content (see 1512290010).

TDK’s Munich-based Epcos made a public tender offer for all publicly held shares of Tronics, in a stock-based deal valued at about $54.3 million, it said in a news release Monday. Tronics’ portfolio includes MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technologies with multiple sensor functions in one device. Thales Avionics, which owns 20.9 percent of Tronics, said it wishes to remain a strategic shareholder.