If you’ve ever clicked a button on Amazon and accidentally signed up for Prime, or felt like you needed a map to find the cancellation page, you aren’t crazy. You were being played. The Federal Trade Commission just validated your frustration by hitting Amazon with a historic $2.5 billion settlement over its deceptive subscription tactics.

This isn’t just a slap on the wrist; it’s a massive payout. A whopping $1.5 billion is earmarked to refund eligible subscribers, with the rest serving as a civil penalty. Amazon is now legally required to stop the games, meaning they have to give you a clear, obvious option to decline Prime and make leaving the service as easy as joining.

Of course, Amazon isn’t admitting to any shady behavior. «Amazon and our executives have always followed the law, and this settlement allows us to move forward and focus on innovating for customers,» Mark Blafkin, Amazon senior manager, said in a statement. «We work incredibly hard to make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up or cancel their Prime membership, and to offer substantial value for our many millions of loyal Prime members around the world.»

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Why did the FTC file a lawsuit against Amazon?

The FTC filed suit against Amazon accused the company of using «dark patterns» to nudge people into Prime subscriptions and then making it too hard to cancel. The FTC maintained Amazon was in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act. 

«Specifically, Amazon used manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions,» the FTC complaint states.

Who’s eligible for Amazon’s payout?

Amazon’s legal settlement is limited to customers who enrolled in Amazon Prime between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025. It’s also restricted to customers who subscribed to Prime using a «challenged enrollment flow» or who enrolled in Prime through any method but were unsuccessful in canceling their memberships.

The FTC called out specific enrollment pages, including Prime Video enrollment, the Universal Prime Decision page, the Shipping Option Select page and the Single Page Checkout. To qualify for a payout, claimants must also not have used more than 10 Amazon Prime benefits in any 12-month period.

Customers who signed up via those challenged processes and did not use more than three Prime benefits within one year will be paid automatically by Amazon within 90 days. Other eligible Amazon customers will need to file a claim, and Amazon is required to send notices to those people within 30 days of making its automatic payments.

Customers who did not use a challenged sign-up process but instead were unable to cancel their memberships will also need to file claims for payment.

How big will the Amazon payments be?

Payouts to eligible Amazon claimants will be limited to a maximum of $51. That amount could be reduced depending on the number of Amazon Prime benefits you used while subscribed to the service. Those benefits include free two-day shipping, watching shows or movies on Prime Video or Whole Foods grocery discounts. 

Customers who qualify for the payments should receive them by Dec. 24.Customers outside the US aren’t eligible for the payout.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is tough, but also fun. There’s one of those nutty purple categories where you have to spot a word within four other words. If you need help sorting them into groups, you’re in the right place. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: You got it!

Green group hint: Don’t even think about it.

Blue group hint: Hoops.

Purple group hint: Get out of here!

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: «You bet»

Green group: Forbidden.

Blue group: Basketball shots.

Purple group: Starting with synonyms for «scram!»

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is «you bet.» The four answers are absolutely, of course, okey-doke and sure thing.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is forbidden. The four answers are off-limits, proscribed, taboo and verboten.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is basketball shots. The four answers are alley-oop, fadeaway, finger roll and slam dunk.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is starting with synonyms for «scram!» The four answers are go-getter, leavening, Scattergories and shoo-in.

AT&T announced Monday that it has improved 5G performance across its network in the continental United States by activating wireless spectrum — the frequencies used for data transmission — that it acquired in a $23 billion purchase from EchoStar in September. If you’re an AT&T customer who owns a 5G-capable phone or subscribes to AT&T Internet Air home internet, you might already be seeing a boost.

The company says customer download speeds can increase 80% when connected to the wireless network in areas with the upgraded spectrum. For AT&T Internet Air subscribers, the speed increase could be up to 55%. The new increased capacity opens up more possibilities for gaming, streaming content and accessing other high-data applications, as well as connecting rural customers who don’t have access to home fiber internet options.

The upgrade is also arriving — at least so far — without a price increase for existing customers. Verizon and T-Mobile instituted three-year and five-year price guarantees in 2025, so hopefully AT&T’s improved infrastructure doesn’t trigger higher rates. Based on the company’s announcement, though, the expanded spectrum also benefits AT&T internally, making its network more efficient, reducing the need to build new cellular towers and encouraging customers to subscribe to both mobile and home internet services.

It also boosts the capabilities of AT&T’s FirstNet program, which enables first responders to have guaranteed communications even when capacity is restricted, such as during a natural disaster.

Over a period of «a few weeks,» the company has deployed hardware to 23,000 cell sites that enables midband (3.45 GHz) spectrum in more than 5,300 cities across 48 states, according to AT&T.

What’s the significance of midband? 5G networks work across a swathe of spectrum frequencies. High-speed millimeter-wave signals offer the highest speed and performance, but have limited range and don’t work well with obstructions, such as buildings. Low-band 5G offers the slowest speeds but works over a broader area. Midband is a balance of the two, offering faster speeds than low-band with larger coverage.

From the customer’s perspective, this should translate into faster, more consistent network access. If you’re an AT&T subscriber, you’ll see «5G+» in the status bar of your phone when connected to a millimeter wave or midband network, or «5G» in a low-band area. (You might also see «5GE,» which is actually 4G LTE and not 5G.)

To give you a single data point, I was sitting in my home office in Seattle using an AT&T-connected phone with full bars and «5G+» displayed. I ran Ookla’s Speedtest app and got download speeds of nearly 500Mbps and upload speeds of around 80Mbps. That’s comparable to many home internet speeds (and echoes the performance I got on a recent United Airlines flight using onboard Starlink Wi-Fi). 

(Disclosure: Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)