Facebook added a mobile marketplace for users to buy and sell with other people in their local community, the social network said in a Monday news release: The new feature lists items sold nearby and lets users search by location, category and price. A buyer can contact a seller through direct message to work out details of the transaction; Facebook doesn’t manage payment or delivery, it said. Marketplace rolls out first to the Facebook mobile app for iPhone and Android in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand; it will come later to other countries and the desktop version of Facebook, the company said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation called Google's use of the term "incognito" for its Allo messaging app that provides end-to-end encryption "ultimately dangerous" for all users. In a Monday blog post, EFF researcher Gennie Gebhart said Google's use of the term "incognito" means something different in Allo than in the Chrome browser. In the Chrome incognito mode, she wrote, user activity isn't stored in the browser history, though ISPs can still determine which websites are visited. In Allo, no one can read a user's end-to-end encrypted messages, but conversations "are stored on your device for a certain period of time after you send them." Users will likely "misunderstand and underestimate Allo’s end-to-end encryption -- or, even worse, overestimate Chrome’s incognito browsing mode and expose themselves to more risk than the name 'incognito' leads them to expect," wrote Gebhart. Offering end-to-end as a once-in-a-while vs. default option signals to people the level of importance of the message for hackers, spies and others, she said. Instead, Google could, for example, offer two apps, one less secure and one that is end-to-end encrypted, she said. The company didn't comment.

Chinese consumer tech and content giant LeEco plans its “official launch” in the U.S. at an Oct. 19 event in San Francisco, the company said Friday. LeEco is “the global tech company whose super phones, TVs and bikes have been beating out the world’s top brands -- but we have a lot more than just screens planned,” the company said. LeEco CEO Jia Yueting sees his company “comprehensively landing in the United States,” he told a July news conference where it was announced that LeEco would buy Vizio for $2 billion (see 1607260066).

Health and fitness tracking using a mobile app, fitness band or smartwatch is popular among one in three internet users globally, GfK said in a Thursday report. Men globally are more likely than women to use a fitness tracker, but five countries -- Australia, Canada, China, France and Russia -- “stand out” as having a higher percentage of their female online populations using a tracking app or device, it said. Overall, fitness trackers are most popular among adults age 20-39, it said. Only a quarter of teenagers 15 and older now track their fitness activity, but many more said they did so in the past, the report said. “This suggests potential for bringing this significant number of past users back into the market” with the right messaging or promotional offers from retailers and manufacturers, it said.

Proliferation of augmented reality and virtual reality applications and services like Pokemon Go is sparking significant legal and regulatory issues about privacy, cybersecurity, e-commerce, free expression, intellectual property and safety, said R Street Technology Policy Fellow Anne Hobson in a paper. Privacy advocates and lawmakers like Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., raised concerns with Pokemon Go creator Niantic over data collected from users and how it's being used (see 1607150014, 1607250009 and 1609010083). In privacy, Hobson wrote Thursday, passive data collection, facial recognition and targeted advertising are concerns. She said some state laws go further than federal rules and "present a more proximate threat" to AR and VR companies. Besides concerns with hacking, data breaches and information sharing requirements for AR and VR companies, she cited potential issues with data localization and the intersection of AR with IoT.

Facebook is talking with the Association of National Advertisers on how the company and ANA can work more closely together, emailed a Facebook spokesman, in response to criticism the company overestimated video viewing for two years (see 1609290075). "Trust and transparency with our partners are paramount to the operation of our company," emailed a spokesman Thursday. "Our focus has always been on driving business results for our clients, and we strongly believe in third-party verification. We have a history of working with industry leaders including Nielsen, Moat, and comScore -- and we continue to explore more partnerships.” ANA President Bob Liodice said Thursday in a blog post that Facebook should be audited and accredited by the Media Rating Council or another third party, which he called "table stakes" for digital ads.

The oneM2M global standards initiative issued the second release of oneM2M specifications for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and IoT, said oneM2M founding partner ATIS in a Thursday announcement. Release 2 is based on contributions from more than 200 member companies and builds on oneM2M's first set of official specs enabling basic connectivity between applications and devices, said ATIS. The new specs open the IoT ecosystem to devices that lack the protocol and enable interworking among systems using AllSeen Alliance's AllJoyn, Open Connectivity Foundation's OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium) and the Open Mobile Alliance's Lightweight M2M (LWM2M), it said. The 17 specs in Release 2 address security by enabling end-to-end secure information exchange between any devices or servers, it said. The specs implement attribute and role-based dynamic access control in consumer-oriented IoT scenarios and allow granting temporary authorization to devices during operation, it said. Semantic interoperability enables meaningful data exchange for secure distribution and reuse, said ATIS. As a result of the latest spec, the number of devices that can connect in the IoT ecosystem “is greatly expanded” beyond the 50 billion devices Cisco estimates will be connected by 2020, ATIS said.

Clarification: What NTIA reported about non-Asian minorities, people with disabilities, lower-income and those with lower levels of educational attainment is that they are among groups "most likely not to use the Internet at home" (see 1609280025).

Facebook's recent disclosure that it overestimated video viewing for two years is "troubling," and the site hasn't reached "the level of measurement transparency that marketers need and require," said Association of National Advertisers President Bob Liodice in a Thursday blog post. He said Facebook's metrics aren't accredited by the Media Rating Council and it's time for the company and others to be audited and accredited, since marketers spend billions of dollars on Facebook. Last week, the company said in a post it discovered an error in how it calculated video metrics on its dashboard and fixed it. The company didn't comment.

Four initial voluntary documents providing guidelines for information sharing and analysis on cybersecurity risks, incidents and best practices will be published Friday, said the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization Standards Organization (ISAO SO) in a news release Thursday. Led by the University of Texas at San Antonio, the ISAO SO is a nongovernmental group established a year ago through executive order 13691 to spur private sector cybersecurity sharing (see 1502130048). The group said the four publications will offer: an overview of ISAOs; a set of guidelines on how to create one and make it effective; a conceptual framework on information sharing, types of cybersecurity-related information that may want to be shared, how to facilitate sharing and privacy and security concerns; and resources related to federal laws and regulations, plus state and local perspectives. "We anticipate updating and expanding these guidelines based on feedback from their implementation," said Rick Lipsey, the ISAO SO's deputy director. "The ISAO Series will evolve in the coming months to serve the community with additional publications that will allow all organizations and individuals to better defend themselves against emerging cyber threats.” More than 160 experts collaborated on the documents, with public feedback, the release said. The group will host its next online public meeting Oct. 20 to address the publications, among other things.