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El Reg reports [theregister.co.uk]

The US Federal Trade Commission is holding off regulating the Internet of Things industry until there is an event which "harms consumers right now", according to its acting head.

Maureen Ohlhausen, the American regulator's acting head, told a gathering of cyber security professionals that she was not inclined to impose mandatory regulations on IoT devices.

"We haven't taken a position", she said, according [theguardian.com] to The Guardian.

"We're saying not 'Let's speculate about harm five years out', but 'Is there something happening that harms consumers right now or is likely to cause harm to consumers'", she added. The British newspaper contrasted her position with the Dyn cyberattack last October, when millions of hacked IoT devices crapflooded [theregister.co.uk] Dyn's widely used DNS servers and knocked many big websites offline, including Reddit, Netflix, and Github.

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