First Suit Filed Against Internet &#39;Spyware&#39;
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The US government has sued a New Hampshire man in its first attempt to crack down on Internet &quot;spyware&quot; that seizes control of a user&#39;s computer without permission.
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Secure Computing will pay a total of $1 million to settle Washington state's first spyware case.
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The suits include the first filed by America Online against spammers who use instant messaging, a practice the online industry calls spimming.
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The Federal Trade Commission formally announced yesterday its first assault against spyware - bits of computer code that surreptitiously install themselves on the computers of Internet users
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Microsoft Corp is suing a company it claims provides so-called &quot;bulletproof&quot; web hosting to spammers. A company attorney said it is the first time anybody has been sued for allegedly providing spam &quot;support services&quot;.
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Hollywood film studios have filed their first wave of lawsuits against people in the US who trade pirated films over the internet.
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With Congress considering new legislation to increase penalties against spyware companies that install programs on people&#39;s computers without their knowledge, the Federal Trade Commission last week filed a complaint against Sanford Wallace, the New
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What's the best remedy for this obnoxious software installed without PC users' notice? Here are assessments of five popular anti-spyware utilities, three free and two that sell for $30.-For The Post
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WASHINGTON - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday filed a legal complaint against two companies that allegedly infected computers with spyware and pop-up advertising, then tried to sell their owners spyware-blocking software.
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Have adware and spyware commandeered your computer? An extreme solution: erasing your hard drive and starting over.
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WASHINGTON - In what regulators are calling a first, the government has asked for a court order to shut down a spyware operation.    The Federal Trade Commission says computer users who went to certain Web sites unknowingly had the snooping software downloaded onto their computers...
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The Federal Trade Commission won an important victory last week in its fight to protect consumers from spyware, the software that tracks unsuspecting Web surfers, bombards them with advertisements and sometimes even steal login information and passwords.
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The FTC has won a settlement against a spyware operation responsible for installing malware on users' computers that tracked Internet activity, changed home-page settings and inserted a large frame onto browser windows that displayed ads.
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The very lawsuits that swept through US cyberspace have reportedly made their way across the Atlantic. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said Thursday that it filed 459 criminal and
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has asked a federal court to require an alleged Web page hijacking operation to obey previous orders barring unfair and deceptive practices.Walter Rines, business partner Sanford Wallace, and Rines&#39; company, Online Turbo Merchant, diverted users of MySpace.com to other Web sites and barraged them with ads to earn advertising commissions, according to court papers filed with the FTC. The defendants used pagejacking, phishing, and other methods to target MySpace users in violation of a previous court order, the FTC said in a news release.The FTC, in a Jan. 23 filing, asked the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire to order the defendants to give up the money they earned from their MySpace scheme.Rines&#39; listed phone number in New Hampshire was disconnected.In October 2005, the FTC charged Odysseus Marketing and its owner, Rines, with luring consumers to their Web site by offering free software, including a program that supposedly allowed them to engage in anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing. The software was bundled with spyware that intercepted and replaced search results and barraged consumers&#39; computers with pop-up ads, the FTC said. The software also stole users&#39; personal information, and users were unable to locate or uninstall the spyware through reasonable means, the FTC said.The FTC alleged that the defendants&#39; software captured consumers&#39; personal information and transmitted the information to the defendants&#39; servers. Consumers were unable to locate or uninstall the spyware through reasonable means, the agency charged. The court ordered a preliminary halt to these practices pending trial, and in October 2006 Odysseus and Rines settled the charges by stipulating to a permanent injunction.The permanent injunction prohibited the defendants from redirecting consumers&#39; computers; from changing any Web browser&#39;s default home page; and from modifying or replacing the functions of any computer application. It required Rines and his company to obtain consumers&#39; express consent before downloading or distributing any content to their computers.The permanent injunction also imposed a $1.75 million judgment, and all but $10,000 was suspended based on the defendants&#39; inability to pay.In its recent filing, the FTC alleges that Rines, his company, and Wallace knew of the permanent injunction and violated that order by diverting users from MySpace.com to their Web sites.
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Redmond-based Microsoft Corp. filed three lawsuits against alleged spammers in US District Court in Seattle Oct. 27, claiming the defendants &quot;spoofed&quot; its Web site, as well as the Web domains of America Online, EarthLink Inc.
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How spyware, a program that creeps onto a computerÂs hard drive unannounced, is wrecking the Internet.