Cox Media and two marketing firms have been fined $930,000 by the FTC for falsely claiming they could secretly spy on users through phones and smart devices to target ads, despite lacking evidence such surveillance was actually possible.

The Verge

An exceptionally weird controversy has come back to haunt Cox Media and a pair of marketing firms, which claimed they were secretly listening to users via phones and smart devices - despite little evidence they actually could. On Thursday the Federal Trade Commission announced that Cox, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works would pay a total of $930,000 to settle allegations that they were in fact lying about spying on people to target ads.
As chronicled by Techdirt a couple of years ago, Cox publicl