Technology

AT&T has agreed to pay $13 million to settle a federal investigation into whether the mobile phone service provider failed to protect customer information in connection with a data breach last year, the Federal Communications Commission said Tuesday.  

The FCC’s probe focused on how AT&T’s privacy, cybersecurity and vendor management practices may have played a role in the January 2023 breach, in which hackers penetrated the company’s cloud system. The breach exposed data belonging to nearly 9 million wireless customers. 

As part of the settlement, AT&T entered a consent decree that requires the telecommunications giant to enhance its data governance practices, increase its supply chain integrity, and ensure appropriate processes and procedures in handling sensitive data.

Before the cyberattack, AT&T relied on a third-party vendor to host customer data. The user information exposed in the hack, including the number of lines on a customer’s account and billing information from 2015 through 2017, should have been deleted well before the breach, according to the FCC. The sensitive information did not include customers’ bank information, Social Security numbers or account passwords.

“The Communications Act makes clear that carriers have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumer data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning for digital age data breaches,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Carriers must take additional precautions given their access to sensitive information, and we will remain vigilant in ensuring that’s the case no matter which provider a customer chooses.

FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal also said telecom firms “have an obligation to reduce the attack surface and entry points that threat actors seek to exploit in order to access sensitive customer data.”

AT&T has been subject to subsequent breaches, including an April cyberattack it disclosed in July in which hackers “nearly all” of its cellular customers’ text and call records for a six-month period between May 1, 2022 to Oct. 31, 2022.

For its part, AT&T told CBS News that “protecting our customers’ data remains one of our top priorities.”

AT&T said that when a vendor it previously used was breached, its own wireless customer data was exposed. 

“Though our systems were not compromised in this incident, we’re making enhancements to how we manage customer information internally, as well as implementing new requirements on our vendors’ data management practices,” a spokesperson said. 

Large social media companies and streaming platforms — including Amazon, Alphabet-owned YouTube, Meta’s Facebook and TikTok — engage in a “vast surveillance of users” to profit off their personal information, endangering privacy and failing to adequately protect children, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday.

In a 129-page report, the agency examined how some of the world’s biggest tech players collect, use and sell people’s data, as well as the impact on children and teenagers. The findings highlight how the companies compile and store troves of info on both users and non-users, with some failing to comply with deletion requests, the FTC said.

“The report lays out how social media and video streaming companies harvest an enormous amount of Americans’ personal data and monetize it to the tune of billions of dollars a year,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement. “While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking.”

According to the FTC, the business models of major social media and streaming companies centers on mass collection of people’s data, specially through targeted ads, which account for most of their revenue.

“With few meaningful guardrails, companies are incentivized to develop ever-more invasive methods of collection,” the agency said in the report. 

“Especially troubling”

The risk such practices pose to child safety online is “especially troubling,” Khan said.

Child advocates have long complained that federal child privacy laws let social media services off the hook provided their products are not directed at kids and that their policies formally bar minors on their sites. Big tech companies also often claim not to know how many kids use their platforms, critics have noted.

 “This is not credible,” FTC staffers wrote. 

Meta on Tuesday launched Instagram Teen Accounts, a more limited experience for younger users of the platform, in an effort to assuage concerns about the impact of social media on kids.

The report recommends steps, including federal legislation, to limit surveillance and give consumers rights over their data.

Congress is also moving to hold tech companies accountable for how online content affects kids. In July, the Senate overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation aimed at protecting children called the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill would require companies strengthen kids’ privacy and give parents more control over what content their children see online. 

YouTube-owner Google defended its privacy policies as the strictest in the industry.

“We never sell people’s personal information, and we don’t use sensitive information to serve ads. We prohibit ad personalization for for users under 18, and we don’t personalize ads to anyone watching ‘made for kids content’ on YouTube,” a Google spokesperson said in an email.

Amazon, which owns the gaming platform Twitch, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meta, which also owns Instagram, declined comment.

The FTC report comes nearly a year after attorneys general in 33 states sued Meta, saying company for years kept kids online as long as possible to collect personal data to sell to advertisers.

Meta said at the time that no one under 13 is allowed to have an account on Instagram and that it deletes the accounts of underage users whenever it finds them. “However, verifying the age of people online is a complex industry challenge,” the company said.

The issue of how Meta’s platforms impact young people also drew attention in 2021 when Meta employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen shared documents from internal company research. In an interview with CBS News’ Scott Pelley, Haugen pointed to data indicating that Instagram worsens suicidal thoughts and eating disorders for certain teenage girls. 

Apple’s iPhone 16 lineup hit stores in some 60 countries Friday, but the new phones have not exactly been flying off the shelves. 

Some analysts attribute tepid demand for the new phones to the fact that they were missing a key attribute out of the box: the tech giant’s much-hyped artificial intelligence features.  

“One of the key factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that the major selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch alongside the iPhone 16 release,” TF International Securities Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a blogpost. 

Despite the company’s best efforts, the launch of Apple Intelligence is more complicated and drawn out than much of the marketing surrounding it suggests. 

The new iPhones come preloaded with iOS 18, Apple’s latest software upgrade. Contrary to earlier reports, however, iOS 18 does not include artificial intelligence enhancements. Instead, Apple Intelligence will begin with iOS 18.1, set to arrive in October, according to Apple. 

Consumers anxious to test out Apple Intelligence can download a public beta version of the software which was made available Thursday — just three days after the release of iOS 18. Apple Intelligence features integrated into iOS 18.1 include “text rewriting tools,” and a “glowy new Siri design,” the Verge reported.

iPhone 16 series first-weekend pre-order sales were down about 13% compared with those of the iPhone 15 series during the same period last year, noted Kuo. “The key factor is the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series,” she said. 

Kuo added that Apple employees, who typically have to wait several weeks after new iPhone models are released to purchase them, are able to use their employee discounts on the new phones now.

“This could be another sign that the early demand for the iPhone 16 is below expectations,” Kuo wrote in a post on X. 

Rollout of Apple Intelligence will be gradual

Once iOS 18.1 officially is officially released, Apple Intelligence will be integrated into apps like Mail and Notes. The new technology is designed to simplify daily chores like list-writing, “[harnessing] the power of Apple silicon to understand and create language and images, take action across apps, and draw from personal context to simplify and accelerate everyday tasks,” according to Apple. 

Apple Intelligence is also expected to make Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, work better — though enhancements may likely be subtle at first. With the first iOS upgrade, Siri will be endowed “with richer language-understanding capabilities,” according to Apple in a description of the iPhone 16 on its website. Users will also be able to communicate with Siri by text as well, “and switch fluidly between text and voice as they accelerate everyday tasks.”  

Apple Intelligence will also work on iPhone 15 Pro models, once the software update arrives.

CNET senior editor Lisa Eadicicco told CBS news she’s not surprised that demand for iPhone 16 isn’t going through the roof. 

“For people looking to upgrade, it’s really not about the year-over-year improvements anymore,” she told CBS News. “I think the days of buying the latest iPhone every year are behind us. I think if you have a phone that’s several generations old, those are the people that are really going to benefit form the upgrade because you get longer battery life.” 

People only upgrade when they “need” a new phone, said Eadicicco, which is typically every three years or so, according to CNET data.