News: Petco settles with FTC over cyber security gaffe
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It's the fifth time regulators have taken action against a company for failing to protect consumer data -- and the second time the same California coder blew the whistle.
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FTC Filing Targets Malicious Spyware  Spyware has come under target of the Federal Trade Commission with a new complaint filed in federal court which is requesting that two Internet based advertising and software firms be closed. The FTC filing was made last week with a press conference to be scheduled for ...
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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A company that made contaminated pet food that killed dozens of dogs nationwide will pay $3.1 million in a settlement with pet owners, an attorney said Friday.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;has settled a complaint with a Web-based company it accused of selling people&#39;s telephone records without permission, the agency said Monday.
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Chinese regulators said today that the companies had exported mislabeled drug and tainted pet food ingredients.
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Raising the fine line US consumer watchdog the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is calling for a bigger stick with which to punish spyware purveyors.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Washington's attorney general has settled the first case prosecuted under the state's 2005 Computer Spyware Act. The settlement announced Monday is with antispyware vendor Secure Computer. The White Plains, New York, software company wasÂ accused of marketing its product via deceptive spam and pop-up ads, which offered free spyware scans that always detected a problem with the computer that was scanned. The company and its president, Paul Burke, will pay $725,000 in legal fees and $200,000 in penalties, and will reimburse Washington state customers $75,000, said Paula Selis, senior council with the attorney general's office. "Given the scope of the defendants' practices and the amount of consumer harm out there, we feel this is a very fair settlement." More than 1,100 state residents purchased the company's Spyware Cleaner software since it went on the market in 2004, Selis said. Those customers will now be e-mailed by Secure Computer and offered a refund for the $49.95 product, under terms of the settlement. Secure Computer, which admits no wrongdoing in the matter, is also prohibited fromÂ using deceptive marketing techniquesÂ to promote its software, and the company must now review the advertising of its marketing affiliates to make sure they comply with the settlement. That seems like an unlikely possibility, however, because Spyware Cleaner was pulled from the market shortly after the lawsuits were filed in late January, and Secure ComputerÂ is now out of business,Â according to the company's Web site. Representatives from Secure Computer could not be reached for comment. Burke, who was Secure Computer's president, has formed a new company called Safe App Software, which is now selling a registry cleaner product, Selis said. That product is not being sold in the U.S. she added. Secure Computer and four of its business partners were sued by Microsoft and the Washington attorney general in January, but charges against three of the men have already been settled. A fourth man, Manoj Kumar of Maharashtra, India, could not be located, the attorney general's office said. Burke and Secure Computer settled the Microsoft lawsuit about two months ago, said Spencer Freeman, an attorney with Freeman Law Firm Inc. who represented the defendants in the case. Freeman declined to comment on Monday's settlement.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Ziff Davis - A SCO spokesman says the company has completed its arranged settlement with its former financial backer without fanfare.
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Consumers harmed by a pyramid-scheme scam at SkyBiz.com have until the end of March to file claims through a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the agency announced.
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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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Officials in the US are cracking down on an alleged distributor of Internet &quot;Spyware.&quot; In the first suit of its kind, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims Seismic Entertainment and SmartBot, secretly installs programs on a users&#39; computer without
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(InfoWorld) - An Internet-based provider of sexually explicit entertainment has agreed to pay a $465,000 civil penalty for sending unwanted e-mail, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Tuesday. The settlement with TJ Web Productions is the fifth after the FTC announced a crackdown on sexually explicit e-mail spam in July 2005, when the agency charged seven companies with violating a U.S. law requiring warning labels on sexually explicit e-mail. Sexually explicit e-mails sent by TJ Web affiliates have been "widely distributed" since May 2004, according to an FTC complaint. Including the TJ Web settlement, the FTC has collected more than $1.6 million in civil penalties from the five companies, the FTC said. The FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule and the CAN-SPAM Act, passed by Congress in late 2003, require commercial e-mailers of sexually explicit material to use the phrase, "sexually explicit," in the subject line, and to ensure that the initially viewable area of the message does not contain graphic sexual images. The rule and the law also require that unsolicited commercial e-mail give recipients a way to opt out of receiving future e-mail and provide a postal address. Under the proposed settlement, TJ Web is permanently prohibited from violating the FTCâs Adult Labeling Rule. The company also is permanently prohibited from violating the CAN-SPAM Act by initiating commercial e-mail without clearly and conspicuously displaying a physical postal address and also without including an opt-out mechanism. TJ Web, based in Henderson, Nevada, did not send e-mail directly to consumers, but it operated an affiliate marketing program and paid others to send e-mail on its behalf, the FTC said. TJ Web operates "dozens" of adult Web sites containing sexually explicit photographs and videos, according to the FTC complaint. The proposed settlement, which requires court approval, also forces TJ Web to obtain agreement from affiliates that they will comply with the terms of the court order. Although TJ Web has a Web site, there is no contact information listed, nor does the company have a published telephone number, so no one there could be reached for comment.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission reached a settlement today with the Walt Disney Company over the company&#39;s failure to disclose its relationships with various board members as well as with an airline controlled by a director.
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(InfoWorld) - A subcontractor working for a company that processes and fulfills orders for the Disney Movie Club sold credit card numbers and other account information belonging to an unknown number of customers to undercover law enforcement agents. The May 2007 incident has prompted Disney to send out letters to an unspecified number of customers informing them about the breach. Disney did not respond to requests for comment about the incident. But Brad Van Duser, an Atlanta-based customer of the company's movie club, received the letter and made it available to Computerworld. The letter is dated July 6 and signed by John Flynn, vice president of online digital and directing marketing for Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of The Walt Disney Co. In it, Flynn said the incident involved an employee at Alta Resources Inc., a Neenah, Wis.-based outsourcer working for Disney. According to Flynn, the employee sold credit card information including names, addresses, credit card numbers and expiration dates to law enforcement authorities in an undercover sting operation. Flynn said Disney had been assured that card security codes, such as the CVV code, had not been compromised in the incident. "Law enforcement officials have informed us that there is no indication that your information was used to make improper purchases or sold to anyone other than federal law enforcement agents," Flynn said in his letter. "Nevertheless, in an abundance of caution, we have informed representatives of Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover of these events." The letter urged recipients to contact the financial institutions that issued their credit cards if they had any questions regarding their accounts. But it did not mention any free credit monitoring services, an option many companies have offered in similar situations. Van Duser said he was surprised by the incident. "As a customer, what surprised me the most was that even after all of the security breaches reported in the news recently that a large, reputable company like Disney had not taken steps to thoroughly protect my credit card information," he said in an e-mail. "And then when the breach occurred, they didn't offer a credit monitoring or other service." The Disney incident is the latest in a seemingly endless stream of breaches being disclosed by major companies this summer. Just this week it was disclosed that Kingston Technologies Inc., a maker of computer memory technologies, sent out letters to about 27,000 customers in connection with a September 2005 data breach that the company did not discover until recently. Western Union made a similar disclosure, announcing that it was notifying about 20,000 customers of a potential compromise of their personal data following the discovery of a database intrusion. Such incidents have heightened consumer concerns and pushed several states to consider or enact laws requiring retailers and other entities handling credit card data to implement safeguards for protecting the data. One of the most closely watched of these laws is California's proposed AB 779 legislation, which would require breached entities such as Disney to disclose more details about security breaches, including a description of the categories of personal data that might have been compromised. In addition, the law would also hold breached entities financially liable for the costs incurred by banks and credit unions to notify customers of a breach and to subsequently block and reissue cards.
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NEW YORK, December 16: In addition to its $210 million settlement with the Department of Justice over securities fraud at America Online, Time Warner has reached a proposed settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a further $300 million
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Secure Computer agrees to pay $1 million to settle charges that it violated Washington state's spyware law.
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Time Warner pays to settle securities fraud charges. Also: The FCC says yes to wireless internet for airline passengers & hellip;.  Google wins trademark lawsuit against Geico & hellip;. and more.