The new effort by the Federal Trade Commission will require all five companies to provide information about the smaller players they’ve purchased over the past 10 years, including documents for deals that may not have been large enough to warrant deep, closer inspection by government watchdogs at the time.

The inquiry differs from a traditional investigation: Using its so-called 6(b) authority, the FTC can obtain documents from companies for reasons other than an immediate law enforcement action. Still, the records the FTC amasses could ultimately influence its thinking about Silicon Valley and the tech industry’s size, sparking investigations, resulting in tough punishments or prompting the commission to seek further enforcement powers from Congress once it concludes its work.

“This initiative will enable the Commission to take a closer look at acquisitions in this important sector, and also to evaluate whether the federal agencies are getting adequate notice of transactions that might harm competition,” FTC Chairman Joe Simons said in a statement.

Already, the FTC is specifically investigating Facebook, the company announced last year, and its prior purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp. More scrutiny of the social-networking giant’s past deals – and those of its competitors – could follow as a result of the new study.

Developed by Boston Dynamics Inc., the robot is set to start patrolling Aker BP’s oil and gas production vessel at the Skarv field in the Norwegian Sea this year, testing its ability to run inspections, detect hydrocarbon leaks, gather data and generate reports.

The upshot for Aker BP, which is seeking to be a front-runner in the digitalization of the oil industry, is to make offshore operations safer and more efficient, the company said as it presented the robot at its capital markets day in Oslo on Tuesday. Aker BP will run the tests with Cognite, the software venture controlled by the oil company’s main owner, Aker ASA.

“These things never get tired, they have a larger ability to adapt and to gather data,” Kjetel Digre, Aker BP’s senior vice president for operations, said in an interview. The company’s Chief Executive Officer Karl Johnny Hersvik said he was “pretty sure” Spot wouldn’t be the last robot to get an employee number.

Guided by a remote, Spot walked up to Hersvik on stage at the company’s event at an Oslo hotel on Tuesday. When asked whether it had detected any people in the audience that weren’t supposed to be there, the dog nodded, though it wasn’t clear who that was.

Retailers recognise that seamless customer experience is no longer a “nice-to-have” feature – it’s a critical factor in winning new customers and retaining existing ones – and flexible cloud infrastructure is critical to delivering it, according to the firm’s second Enterprise Cloud Index Report.

A recent IDC study noted that worldwide spending on customer experience technologies will reach $641 billion (Bt20.03 trillion) in 2022, demonstrating it is at the forefront of business leaders’ strategies. In line with broader IT industry trends, many retailers also recognise the full, long-term costs of the public cloud.

Additional findings of this year’s report include:

* Retailers focus most on agility: Unlike in the broader IT industry, where cost is the top driver, retailers ranked the ability to accelerate IT deployments (54.3 per cent) as the top factor in deciding the best cloud environment for each application.

* Security is top of mind: Nearly two-thirds of respondents (63.6 per cent) said security has significant influence on their future cloud deployments, with hybrid cloud specifically identified as the most secure (32 per cent).

* Retail leads in digital apps and IoT cloud deployments: Always innovating to keep pace with customers’ demands, retailers outpace averages in using the public cloud to run digital and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. They also run their business applications more often on the public cloud than other industries, with about 11 per cent current penetration of multiple public clouds and about 19 per cent penetration of a single public cloud.

“Staying relevant to today’s customers means having the necessary cloud infrastructure in place to embrace omnichannel retail experiences,” said Nutanix VP of Product Marketing Greg Smith.

“Retailers use data to connect the e-commerce and in-store shopping experiences, and the only way they can do this accurately and efficiently is through flexible, scalable technology. The rise of selling on social media platforms also means integrating payments into the user experience, bringing security and protection of customers’ data to the forefront of retailers’ minds. Hybrid cloud provides the portability and control needed to bring retailers into the new era of customer experience,” he added.

The 2019 respondent base spanned multiple industries and businesses around the globe – the Americas; Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region.

For further information, visit https://www.nutanix.com/enterprise-cloud-index

Federal regulators have approved the combination of the two smallest national wireless carriers, but a group of state attorneys general has sued to block the deal, saying it could reduce competition and harm consumers. A federal judge has heard testimony from both sides and is expected to return with a decision within weeks.

Sprint’s value has eroded as the deal hangs in limbo. The carrier’s market capitalization has fallen to about $20 billion from last July’s peak of $33 billion, putting it back where it was on April 9, 2018, a day before reports that the companies had resumed talks. The stock fell as much as 3.7% on Monday.

Two factors are weighing on the stock: concerns about the deal’s completion, and the absence of a guaranteed price if the deal is approved. T-Mobile and Sprint haven’t renewed the merger agreement since it expired Nov. 1. And while there have been “not hostile” discussions of several issues, including price, Deutsche Telekom appears to be in no rush to stop Sprint’s free fall by drawing up a new agreement.

T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere was still optimistic that the deal would get final clearance, he said on an earnings conference call Thursday. Once it’s approved and the deal closes, the terms of the merger could change, he said. If the agreement needs to be amended, “including possibly price, we would handle that very swiftly after the deal was approved,” Legere said.

As far as negotiation leverage goes, Sprint’s in a tough spot, said Walt Piecyk, an analyst with LightShed Partners.

“Sprint has no alternative but to take whatever DT and T-Mobile offers them,” Piecyk said. “There’s really nothing else they can do.”

This is the third time T-Mobile and Sprint have made a run at a merger. The current attempt gained momentum after T-Mobile convinced antitrust officials at the Justice Department and regulators at the Federal Communications Commission that a combination with Sprint would make a more formidable competitor to larger rivals AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc.

The nod came after the companies agreed to divest Sprint’s Boost prepaid business as part of a package of assets that Dish Network Corp. would use to enter the wireless-service business as a new competitor.

For Sprint, the buyout is a lifeline. The company has said it would be unable to compete effectively on its own. Sprint has about $40 billion in debt and faces a costly network upgrade to catch up with rivals on service quality and next-generation 5G wireless technology.

It’s unclear whether the company can fund itself in the long run without help from its parent SoftBank Group or T-Mobile, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Stephen Flynn.

Sprint continues to slide on the uncertainty of a merger, potentially improving the takeover terms for Deutsche Telekom, and yet the alternative for Sprint — no deal — is worse, Piecyk said.

“The downside for Sprint,” he said, “is that the stock goes to zero.”

The EU’s General Court in Luxembourg will host a three-day hearing starting on Feb. 12 as the Alphabet Inc. unit seeks to topple a 2.4 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) penalty in 2017 for thwarting smaller shopping search services.

Lawyers say the court clash will help set the scene for a broader crackdown on U.S. tech giants by Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition commissioner. Apple is separately battling her massive back-tax order and Amazon.com Inc. is currently being investigated for potentially favoring its own products over those of third-party sellers on its platform.

EU regulators will be hoping to repeat a 2007 victory against Microsoft, a narrow win in a contentious investigation that led the company to settle another probe into web browsers. The Microsoft case emboldened the EU’s small team of antitrust watchdogs to take on the likes of Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and in 2010 to pick up complaints against Google.

Defeat for the EU “will be a blow to its attempt for a new enforcement approach in the high tech sector,” said Ioannis Kokkoris, a law and economics professor at Queen Mary University in London. “It will make it think twice how it can bring a successful case against conducts that are not clear cut in markets that are rapidly changing.”

The European Commission’s path to punishing Google was circuitous. The company argued that tiny comparison shopping services didn’t rank high in search because they provided poor quality, that competition was only “a click away.”

Regulators appeared to waver by seeking a settlement where Google would make changes to search display to end the probe without fines. That sparked furor from European publishers and politicians and led to the EU reversing direction and moving toward a penalty after Vestager took charge in 2014.

Since the first decision in 2017, the Dane has also levied separate fines for unfairly linking apps to Android software and for thwarting advertising rivals.

Google is set to argue that the EU decision “is wrong on the law, the facts, and the economics,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in an emailed statement. It will show “that we have improved quality and increased choice for customers” with shopping ads that aim to help people find the products they want and link retailers to potential customers.

The EU and a small army of companies and other organizations cheering it on will argue the opposite, that Google’s actions smothered or hobbled nascent competitors that didn’t appear prominently enough in Google’s search or shopping ads to ever gain the crucial traffic needed for commercial success. The EU has long been poised to move on similar complaints from local search service Yelp Inc., as well as travel and job search services.

“This case is important for the commission” because it will test a so-called self-preference theory of harm, whereby Google is accused of promoting its own services at the expense of those of rivals, said Aitor Ortiz, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. It’s a “novel interpretation” of EU antitrust rules, and the final ruling may have implications not only for future probes against Google, such as searches in maps and restaurants, “but also for other platforms that may have a dual role and ‘self-prefer’ its own products.”

Google and the commission will kick off the hearings on day one, followed by arguments from each of the groups supporting their side. The Brussels-based EU authority has nine groups on its side, including Europe’s main consumer advocacy group, the German government and comparison sites such as Foundem, Kelkoo and Twenga. Google will call on only one flag-waver, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which lobbies for the technology sector.

Fighting on can drag out legal proceedings for years. More than 10 years after its fine, Intel is still waiting for a final ruling after winning a round at the EU’s top court that told a lower tribunal to re-examine the case.

The judges’ decision in Google’s court challenge might only come next year. Before then, a busy 2020 may see the EU introduce “regulatory responses” where online platforms have effectively become “large private gatekeepers and rule-setters,” according to an EU document leaked recently.

“I can’t see the commission backtracking on its view on gatekeeper role of Google,” said legal academic Kokkoris. Even a loss “would still allow the commission to maintain its view of Google being gatekeeper in search, unless the judgment is an extensive rebuttal” of the EU case.

The so-called lab showcases services enabled by the next generation of wireless broadband and invites partners to collaborate on developing new ways to use it. The studio, opening in April, will use 5G to speed up data-intensive content production like motion-capture for entertainment and marketing. It’s all part of the company’s bet on the new tech.

“We’ve pretty much bet the company on this — it’s not like we’re dabbling,” said Toby Redshaw, vice president of innovation at Verizon’s business unit.

Carriers banking on a revenue surge from 5G aren’t likely to get it immediately from consumers, who are unlikely to pay extra for faster smartphones. They are instead pinning their hopes for sales growth on deals in industries such as logistics, automotive and manufacturing, a market that could ultimately be worth $4.3 trillion according to consultancy KPMG.

The outlook is still early, uncertain and competitive for these 5G services. And European carriers will have significant home field advantages: they already have relationships with the continent’s biggest businesses, local cultural and regulatory know-how, and own more local network assets.

But Redshaw says Verizon’s advantages include a head start from testing 5G in the field for years back in the U.S., and its larger scale. He was visiting London for the lab’s opening and to woo prospective clients, and said he’s had recent conversations with a Formula One team and other businesses. The company said the fresh London investment is “significant” but declined to give a number.

Examples of tech on display include cybersecurity visualization software, which lets a user fly around a virtual 3D landscape that represents their company’s network to spot potential anomalies. A service called BriefCam can instantly crunch reams of video and apply searches for a range of objects, such as all the red cars in a day’s worth of traffic footage, something a police force could find useful.

Tech producers led by Foxconn, which makes the majority of the world’s iPhones from Zhengzhou a few hundred miles from the coronavirus outbreak’s epicenter, had begun preparing investors for the potential bedlam when hundreds of thousands make their way back to factories.

Apple’s most important partner warned investors of the daunting task of securing enough workers despite widespread transport blockades, quarantining thousands, and the “nightmare” scenario of an on-campus epidemic that could shut down production altogether. Last week, it took the unprecedented step of warning workers to stay away from its Shenzhen headquarters till further notice as government inspectors vet its containment procedures, Bloomberg News reported. And it’s delayed the return of workers to its main iPhone-making plant in central China, people familiar with the matter said Monday.

“How we can make sure there will be no infection within our campuses will be the first priority, because if you put a lot of people together and one of them gets infected, that will be a nightmare,” Foxconn investor relations chief Alex Yang told investors on a Thursday call, according to a recording obtained by Bloomberg News. “We try very hard to make sure the possibility of any on-site infection will be as low as zero, although it will be challenging.”

The deadly virus has illustrated the increasingly central role China plays in global manufacturing, from clothing and chemicals to automobiles and especially technology. Just about every major piece of consumer electronics is made in China, from iPhones and gaming consoles to half the world’s liquid crystal display or LCD screens. The contagion has already shuttered plants across China for a week longer than anticipated after the Lunar New Year break — a disruption that could get much worse if rolling quarantines and suspended rail and air links prevent the return of the millions of blue-collar laborers at the heart of electronics assembly.

When they do make it back, untold numbers will get funneled into a quarantine of up to two weeks — a sequester of unknown scale. Any disruptions at Chinese plants can, in a worst-case scenario, freeze parts of the supply chain by triggering cascading shortages. Influential supply chain analyst Kuo Ming-chi of TF International estimates Foxconn’s main iPhone-making base will properly resume work only next week — and then at 40% to 60% capacity. Citigroup estimates just 30% of the entire Chinese semiconductor workforce is estimated to return to their workplaces as of Feb 11.

Foxconn said in a statement Saturday it’s working with local governments to prepare for the return of employees, without specifics. Shenzhen’s Longhua district said in a WeChat post it was helping the Taiwanese company fine-tune its plans. “To safeguard everyone’s health and safety and comply with government virus prevention measures, we urge you not to return to Shenzhen,” Foxconn wrote in a Feb. 5 text message to employees based in the southern city. “As for the happy reunion date in Shenzhen, please wait for further notice.”

On last week’s call, Yang spoke in depth about Foxconn’s virus-prevention measures and the need to comply with various regulations in the so-called “iPhone city” of Zhengzhou — just 300 miles from Wuhan, the origin of the outbreak — covering infection-fighting measures from quarantines to face mask and hand sanitizer inventories. “If you are talking about tens of thousands of people in a line, in a building, in a campus and we try to prevent a virus — and in the meantime you are asking for them to do their normal job — that’s very challenging.”

Apple and Foxconn, known also as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., were among the first corporations to try and quantify the viral epidemic’s impact. Hon Hai slashed its 2020 outlook last week, anticipating disruptions to Apple’s carefully calibrated production chain centered on China, as well as dampening consumer demand and overall economic growth. As China’s largest private employer and a key partner to many of the world’s most recognizable consumer brands, the Taiwanese company has become a high-profile symbol of how the outbreak could disrupt Chinese manufacturing and hence the world’s supply of electronics.

The disruptions extend well beyond electronics or technology. Many auto plants in the world’s largest market remain idled. Toyota, which initially halted its Chinese plants until Feb. 9, said Friday it now plans to resume production as soon as Feb. 17. Honda said it will reopen its factory in Hubei on Feb. 14 with an eye toward restarting output the week of Feb. 17. And Volkswagen AG also delayed the resumption of production at some of its Chinese businesses until Feb. 17.

Expect the “supply chain situation to get worse before getting better,” wrote Jeff Pu of GF Securities.

One thing in the industry’s favor is that the first half of the year is often a lull period for a consumer electronics sphere driven by holiday sales and new iPhones in the fall. Yang stressed that the disruption was “manageable” and that Hon Hai would scramble to make up for any early 2020 production shortfall.

Several of the biggest names in tech including Sony Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. have said they’ll restart production in China as scheduled. Production at Tesla Inc.’s new Shanghai factory — its first outside the U.S. — resumed on Feb. 10., it said. And Apple-assembler Pegatron Corp. on Monday said it’s gradually restarting operations.

But much depends on the extent and severity of the outbreak. Even if it peaks soon, the interconnectedness of just-in-time global supply means the entire system will go through an unprecedented upheaval. The shortage of just one component exerts a ripple effect on the entire chain by holding up production further down the line, rippling through the carefully choreographed networks that companies from Apple to Huawei Technologies Co. and display-maker BOE Technology Group Co. rely on.

“There will certainly be risks of on-site infections. Companies also do not have control over neighborhoods near their factories,” said Eric Tseng, chief executive officer of Taipei-based Isaiah Research. “Manpower levels for most manufacturers will still be low during the first two to three weeks of February due to the length of quarantines and the possibility that not many workers will return.”

Unlike in previous years, Foxconn hasn’t even begun the recruitment of the hundreds of thousands it employs annually to piece together gadgets like the Sony Corp. PlayStation and HP Inc. computers, according to people familiar with the matter. Local executives were awaiting clarity and trying to reconcile rapid-fire and sometimes conflicting virus-prevention measures announced by local governments.

As such, its main iPhone-making plant in Zhengzhou may start the week of Feb. 10 with just a small number of workers who didn’t decamp for their hometowns before the extended break, one of the people said. The majority of the plant’s workforce are expected to encounter immense travel obstacles, the person added, asking not to be identified talking about internal matters. Foxconn’s two biggest campuses in Shenzhen now also face a similar predicament given the warning to employees to stay away.

To make matters worse, the virus has shrunk the available labor pool. Foxconn will temporarily halt recruiting workers from Hubei, site of the outbreak’s epicenter in Wuhan, and other heavily affected areas in neighboring provinces, a second person said. It’s ordered workers currently in Hubei as well as from seven other cities in adjacent Henan, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces not to return to work, according to an internal document dated Feb. 4. obtained by Bloomberg. The company offered a 200 yuan ($28) reward to employees who report on co-workers violating that ban. While the picture remains murky, Foxconn is the most visible proxy for the confusion that now grips the broader supply chain.

More broadly, economists are still struggling to tote up the economic fallout of the outbreak. While SARS was bad economic news for China and its neighbors, which suffered from weaker exports and falling tourism, China’s small weight capped the global impact back then, when China’s GDP was 4% of the global total. That share now stands at 17%. That means, even if the outbreak peaks soon and producers impose double overtime to make up for lost production, the final end-demand in 2020 for gadgets of all stripes could take a severe beating.

At Huawei, China’s largest tech company and a global leader in smartphones and networking gear, executives are debating when to resume production for fear of angering Beijing by forcing large numbers of people into cramped dorms and factories, according to another person familiar with the matter. Then there’s the LCD makers from BOE to Tianma Microelectronics Co. that now crank out 50% or more of the screens for all TVs, phones and even car dashboards — much of that from Wuhan.

The city is an important base for FiberHome and other optical fiber makers as well, that Huawei and networking firms rely on. “These will get directly hit,” said Kevin Chen, an analyst at China Merchants Securities. ” Near-term, their production will be impacted even if they resume working they might have a problem getting enough workers resulting in lower utilization.”

And while the law technically covers only California residents, Americans living anywhere can use the CCPA to reset their relationships with more than a dozen major businesses (and counting).

Just know that some companies are going to make you jump through hoops. To help, I’m breaking the CCPA down into bites – and collecting below a growing list of links you can use to take action.

I’ve been learning how to use the law by filing requests to more than 100 companies. To be covered by the CCPA, companies have to make more than $25 million per year or collect data on more than 50,000 people. They’re not incentivized to make it easy: Amazon hid critical links in legal gobbledygook. Marketing data company LiveRamp asked me to submit a selfie holding my own ID, kidnap-victim style. Walmart asked for my astrological sign to confirm my identity. (Really.) And one business left me a voice mail, but the message included no return number . . . or even the name of the company. (Please call back!)

Yet I’ve also been pleasantly surprised: Some of the biggest businesses, including Netflix, Microsoft, Starbucks and UPS, are extending CCPA rights to all Americans rather than just Californians. That makes some sense: It’s additional work for companies to try to confirm where people live. And frankly, it’s not a good look for them to claim they care about customer privacy and then discriminate against Americans who don’t live in California. Many of these companies tell me they’ll participate when Congress passes a federal data privacy law, which they know isn’t likely anytime soon.

Privacy advocates have mixed feelings about the CCPA. It’s true that it creates too much work for many people – and everyone deserves privacy, even if they’re not willing to jump through hoops.

But I’m in the camp that thinks the CCPA is an important step forward. I spent the past year following the secret life of the data on my phone, car and credit cards, often confronting a stone wall from companies. Now we all have the legal authority to demand answers about what’s happening with our data. For example, the CCPA has already revealed that Amazon keeps a record of everything you do on a Kindle, from when you start and stop reading to when you highlight a word. (Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but I review all tech with the same critical eye.)

The CCPA is far from a perfect privacy law, but it’s the one America has in 2020. I want to hear what you discover using it. I’m hopeful it will fuel an overdue public conversation about what kind of surveillance is OK – and what crosses the line.

Q: What does the CCPA do?

A: On its own, the CCPA won’t do much for your privacy. But if you take some action, it gives you three useful rights:

1) You can ask companies to show you exactly what data they’ve collected about you.

2) You can instruct companies not to “sell” your data. The word “sell” is in quotes because the law defines that pretty broadly as an exchange of value. (There’s a lot of debate about that, though – see below.)

3) You can ask companies to delete your data, unless doing so would create a security threat or interfere with someone else’s free speech.

Even better, the law says companies are not allowed to treat you differently or charge you money just for exercising your data rights.

There’s also a special restriction for children: If you’re under 16, a company needs you to explicitly opt in before they can sell your information.

Q: Is it like the European law?

A: The CCPA is a bit like a European law you may have heard about, called the General Data Protection Regulation. What’s different is that the CCPA doesn’t require companies to minimize the data they collect in the first place.

Privacy advocates also think the CCPA is sorely missing the ability for consumers to file lawsuits against companies that violate their rights. Only the California attorney general can do that now.

Q: How much work is this?

A: You have to go to each and every company to exercise your CCPA rights. Yes, that could become a never-ending project. But the good news is that many companies have web forms you can fill out like busywork. I submitted about a hundred in less time than it took me to binge the most recent season of “The Crown.”

So far there’s no tool to help you do this all at once or service that will manage your data for you, though I’ve heard from several start-ups working on that.

Keep in mind that some online services, including Facebook, say a “delete” request involves totally shutting your account, rather than just pressing a reset button on all the unwelcome surveillance of your life.

Q: What hoops might companies make me jump through?

A: Before you dive into making requests, get organized. You’ll need to have access to your usernames, passwords and loyalty card numbers. (If you don’t already have a password manager to keep all your important information organized, this is an excellent time to get one.)

Companies can ask you to prove your identity, and if there are errors or missing information they can reject your request. Scan or photograph your driver’s license; many sites required me to upload it, or a version that was redacted. Data firm Wiland even asked me for a notarized letter. (I reminded it that CCPA requests aren’t supposed to cost consumers anything, and the company suggested I seek out a free notary at a government office or credit union.)

Some companies will try to shift work onto you. Airbnb and PayPal, among others, make you email them requests, rather than using web forms. Instead of a simple “do not sell” switch, companies including Mastercard make you manage a series of privacy “preferences” (as if anyone’s preference would be to have their data sold). To opt out, Best Buy says you have to change your web browser to block all cookies (breaking some sites) and dig into your phone settings to turn off some advertising tracking.

Don’t let any of this stop you from demanding your rights. The most common annoyance is firms hiding their CCPA instructions behind many links and impenetrable privacy policies.

Q: Is there any information that isn’t covered?

A: Companies don’t have to share information that’s already public, that they’ve collected in a job interview or that they’ve aggregated in ways that don’t identify you.

Some companies have come up short in what they actually disclose. For example, in CCPA requests it returned to me, Amazon has yet to share what data it collects in its camera-equipped Amazon Go convenience stores.

And businesses already covered by a few existing privacy laws are exempt – even if those laws don’t require transparency like the CCPA. That means banks and doctor’s offices generally don’t have to abide.

Q: What counts as data ‘sale’?

A: This is one of the most-debated questions in tech right now.

The CCPA says selling data is a transfer of information for commercial purposes. That’s obvious where one company pays another for, say, your burrito purchase history. But many businesses, particularly ones involved in online advertising, pass along information in other ways, such as tracker cookies and pixels hidden on websites and apps.

Some of the biggest firms, including Facebook, Amazon and Google, contend the “do not sell” request part of the CCPA doesn’t apply to them because they don’t sell our data. They just make billions off our data by using it to target ads and train artificial intelligence software.

Others are claiming an out because the law is too vague. For example, Spotify’s privacy policy says it shares your personal information with advertisers – but the music service doesn’t think that should count as a sale. “It is currently unclear whether the use of certain types of advertising partners would be considered a sale under CCPA,” the company says.

The authors of the CCPA say they intended the term “sale” to reflect the wider data economy. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra hasn’t yet published guidelines for how his office will interpret the law, and we might not get firm answers until his office begins enforcing it. That’s set to begin July 1.

Q: Once I have my data, what do I do with it?

A: First, keep it secure by storing it only on a computer you control with a password.

Most of the data requests I’ve received so far have come in formats I can easily read, such as text files or PDFs. But not all: Twitter sent me files in a .js format that requires a data science degree to understand. (The company says it is working to improve that.)

I’m still waiting to hear back on most of my requests; the law gives companies up to 90 days to deliver. But already I learned that WiFi router maker Eero, owned by Amazon, keeps a detailed log of every device that’s ever connected to my network. (It’s like a creepy visitor guest book.) Fandango not only tallied all the movies I’ve watched but also concluded I have an affinity for the Muppets. (True.)

When you examine your data, keep an eye out for information you didn’t know the company had – or don’t think it should. If you don’t like what you see, submit a CCPA delete request. Or stop doing business with the company, and be sure to tell it why.

If you think a company is violating your privacy – or violating the CCPA – you can complain to the California attorney general (click here for a direct link).

Also, tell me about what you discover, using this form or sending me an email. Your experience could help inform my future columns and investigations by The Post. But please don’t just send me your data download from a company. I don’t want to invade your privacy!

Q: OK, let’s do it! Where do I click?

A: The list below includes many of the companies where I’ve submitted CCPA requests. I’ve separated out the companies that have indicated they’ll offer CCPA rights to all Americans.

There are more resources available: A crowdsourced list stored on GitHub, an online resource for coders, has an even longer list of links to company-specific CCPA information pages. Common Sense Media is also building out the website Donotsell.org as a resource for CCPA requests, as is CAPrivacy.org, run by one of the authors of the law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a simple guide on its website, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center has a handy draft form letter to use in cases where companies don’t offer web forms.

If you’re looking for a company not included in any of these resources, I recommend finding the privacy policy on its website and searching for the word California – that’s typically the best place to start.

These companies accept CCPA requests from all Americans:

Amazon

Apple

DoorDash

Facebook

Google

Lutron

Microsoft

Netflix

PayPal

Ring

Roku

Starbucks

Strava

Toyota

Twitter

Uber

UPS

Wiland

Zillow

– – –

These companies accept CCPA requests from California residents:

Acxiom

Airbnb

Alaska Airlines

Albertsons/Safeway

Altria

AT&T

Best Buy

BevMo

Chipotle

Comcast Xfinity

CVS

Disney

Dominos

eBay

Eero

Epsilon

Equifax

Equinox

Experian

Face App

Ford

General Motors

Honda

Hulu

i360

JetBlue

Kayak

Live Nation

LiveRamp

Lyft

Macy’s

Marriott

Mastercard

Nissan

OpenTable

Orangetheory Fitness

Pinterest

Quora

Redfin

Resy

Samsung

SiriusXM

Southwest Airlines

Spotify

Staples

Target

Ticketmaster

TransUnion

Truedata

Uber

Unilever

Verizon

Verizon Media

Visa

Volkswagen

Walmart

Washington Post

Whitepages

Whole Foods

Yelp

* Prediction Number 1

> 90 per cent of all manual IT operations and data-management tasks will be completely automated, opening the door to a new era of IT innovation.

> By 2025, 90 per cent of all manual IT operations and data-management tasks will be completely automated.

* Prediction Number 2

> There will be 600 times more sensitive data shared on the cloud.

> Hackers/attackers are becoming more sophisticated, so it’s critical for companies to ensure the resilience of their data and systems.

* Prediction Number 3

> 100 per cent of enterprise applications will include some form of AI.

> By 2025, 100 per cent of enterprise applications will include some form of embedded AI.

* Prediction Number 4

> 100 per cent of supply-chain apps will depend on augmented reality, virtual reality, blockchain, machine learning (ML) and the internet of things (IoT).

> In some cases, AI algorithms eliminate the need for human decision-making altogether.

* Prediction Number 5

> Automated business processes will enable more personalised interactions in HR, sales, and other business domains.

> By 2025, 80 per cent of sales will be automated, enabling sales reps to focus on relationship-building and customer engagement.

* Prediction Number 6

> 80 per cent of major cities will use IoT for Smart City initiatives. By 2025, 80 per cent of major cities will use IoT data for Smart City initiatives.

* Prediction Number 7

> Data science will be increasingly automated and embedded into analytics and data-management systems.

> By 2025, based on current trajectories, there will not be enough data scientists to meet rising demand.

* Prediction Number 8

> The rise of AI-based machines will create new jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

> Machines are acting as employees in some companies, requiring business leaders to consider how these mechanical workers can best collaborate with one another.

* Prediction Number 9

> Cybersecurity attacks will become more sophisticated with the use of IoT and AI.

> By 2025, 80 per cent of security attacks will come from an inside source.

* Prediction Number 10

> 80 per cent of data will be linked to things instead of individuals.

> The scale of identity data is larger than ever before, with much of that data scattered across users, applications, and ecosystems.

But that’s exactly what some of the nation’s largest banks are doing, a group of former federal regulators said. Companies including Wells Fargo are charging consumers more to borrow money if they attended less prestigious colleges, a form of educational discrimination that may violate credit laws and deepen inequality, according to a new study.

That means Harvard University students, already flush with opportunity, stand to gain an additional edge over their peers at nearby Bunker Hill Community College when taking out loans.

The Student Borrower Protection Center, a Washington-based nonprofit, found that Wells Fargo, one of the largest U.S. lenders, offers significantly cheaper loans to borrowers attending four-year colleges than to those at community colleges, while Upstart Network Inc., an online lending platform, charges a graduate from historically black Howard University almost $3,500 more to borrow $30,000 over five years compared with a similar New York University graduate.

“Despite assurances by these lenders that their practices lift up consumers from marginalized communities, our analysis shows that educational redlining can further drive disparities and inequality,” Seth Frotman, a former student-loan official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who’s now executive director of the nonprofit, said in a statement. Redlining refers to the now-illegal practice of refusing loans based on where borrowers live.

The group chose Wells Fargo and Upstart as case studies to demonstrate broader issues across the industry. Both lenders disputed the Student Borrower Protection Center’s analysis.

“We follow responsible lending practices that take into account expected performance outcomes and are confident that our loan programs conform with fair lending expectations and principles,” Wells Fargo representative Vickee Adams said.

Upstart co-founder Paul Gu said his company works closely with the federal consumer bureau, and that Upstart’s statistics show that those who attended Howard University and borrow through his firm are more likely to get credit and at cheaper terms.

The findings come as lenders and their regulators in Washington embrace so-called alternative data as a way to cut borrowing costs and increase access to credit for historically under-served households. By using data such as a borrower’s alma mater, the argument goes, lenders can better price household loans than if they relied on traditional factors such as credit scores and personal income.

Consumer groups, meanwhile, warn that lenders could abuse the data to overcharge some households. Those fears have been heightened by lenders’ use of algorithms to wade through reams of data to make instant credit decisions, particularly after users of Goldman Sachs’s credit card for Apple Inc. complained late last year that women were given smaller credit lines than their husbands. The New York State Department of Financial Services subsequently opened an investigation.

Disparities in credit scores and incomes across races have led to a “really awful system” in which minority borrowers often pay more than they should, Gu said. His firm regularly reports loan application data to the federal consumer bureau under an agreement that allows Upstart to use borrowers’ educational backgrounds in underwriting decisions without fear of a regulatory crackdown, as long as the company continues to meet fair-lending standards.

“If you want to make it better, you need more data, and you need different kinds of data to help different kinds of people,” Gu said.

Using educational data could help level the playing field, he said. Howard students, for example, are 46% more likely to get a loan under Upstart’s underwriting model than they would from a traditional lender, and they enjoy interest rates that are 18% lower, Gu said.

But disparities remain. White Americans are more likely to have college degrees than blacks and Hispanics, Census Bureau data show, while college dropouts are more likely to fall behind on their student loans than borrowers with degrees, according to U.S. Department of Education figures.

Wells Fargo, for instance, quotes loan interest rates for a hypothetical freshman studying engineering at the Borough of Manhattan Community College that are nearly double those offered to a similar student studying the same subject at the City College of New York nearby, a tool on the lender’s website shows. Both are part of the City University of New York system. Community-college students often complete their four-year degrees at other institutions.

In 2007, Andrew Cuomo, then New York’s attorney general, warned lenders against using borrowers’ educational backgrounds when making loan decisions. And in 2014, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. told Sallie Mae that it couldn’t price loans to students using their college’s loan-default rates without violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.