Spyware charges praised
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The groundbreaking action by the Federal Trade Commission against two New Hampshire software companies is &quot;long overdue,&quot; said one local computer expert.
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A study of home PCs released on Monday found that about 80 percent had been infected with spyware almost entirely unbeknownst to their users.
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Microsoft release today of two free security tools aimed at helping users remove spyware and other malicious code puts the company one step closer to directly competing with the industry's major security vendors.
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NEW YORK -- Search terms related to music and technology are most likely to return sites with spyware and other malicious code, a new study finds.
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More info and a new kit for building and customizing Trojan malware is on sale online.
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(InfoWorld) - The sellers of the Spyware Slayer antispyware program have agreed to pay US$300,000 in fines to settle charges that they violated Washington State spyware and consumer protection laws. Both the charges and the settlement were filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court in Seattle, said Washington State Assistant Attorney General Katherine Tassi. Two companies, both controlled by the same owners, were named in the settlement, she said: High Falls Media LLC, of Hilton, New York, and Roc Telecommunications LLC, of Rochester, New York. Company associates Thomas Tortora, Mark Libutti and Brian Einhaus, all of New York, were also named as defendants. They could not be reached immediately for comment, and the freepcscan.com Web site used to market Spyware Slayer was no longer active on Wednesday. High Falls promoted Spyware Slayer with false pop-up ads warning victims that their computer was infected with spyware, Tassi said. If the victim tried to leave the site, another pop-up cautioned, "if you leave now, damage could be done by harmful worms, viruses, adware, spyware, malware or hacker code." These ads "were essentially startling consumers into believing that they had spyware on their computer," Tassi said. "They had a pop-up that said 'we have detected a 99 percent chance that you have spyware on your computer,' and this was just an advertisement. They had not done anything to detect anything." This type of inducement is illegal under Washington's Computer Spyware Act, but has become an "all too common mode of marketing security software," Tassi said. "We do see this as an increasing trend: the exploiting of consumer fears over spyware and adware as a way of marketing software products." Las week, Washington's attorney general announced a similar settlement with a New York man who used pop-up ads designed to look like Internet Explorer alerts. He was marketing a program called QuikShield Security, she said. Roc Telecommunications ran a number of music download sites, including 24/7 Downloads, Free Download Club, and MP3s Unlimited, which also engaged in deceptive marketing practices, Tassi said. The defendants have not admitted any wrongdoing under the agreement and will have the bulk of their $300,000 fine suspended, provided that they comply with the terms of the agreement and no longer misrepresent what they are selling. "They pay $25,000 of that and then the remaining portion hangs over their head as an incentive to comply with the injunctive provisions," Tassi said. The defendants must also pay $30,000 in legal fees and provide refunds to Washington state residents who purchased their products.
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This year's deluge of spyware has put the need to clean up the Internet in stark relief. What's more, it has set in motion the imminent re-alignment of some of tech's marquee players - Symantec, McAfee, Microsoft, America Online and Yahoo, among them.
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The House Thursday passed a bill that would criminalize the use of spyware to commit fraud or other crimes, adding an additional two to five years to federal sentences.
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So we find out yesterday that Sears installs spyware on customer's machines.  Oops.      But wait! There's more!
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Companies and others that secretly install "spyware" programs on people's computers to quietly monitor their Internet activities would face hefty federal fines under a bill the House passed Tuesday.
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With concerns about spyware rapidly mounting, Blue Coat Systems is introducing a proxy appliance to combat the problem.
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Most users think their computer is safe from adware and spyware--but they're wrong.
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EarthLink, which was the first ISP to provide free anti-spyware tools for its members, has updated its anti-spyware offering with an enhancement that provides real-time software scanning
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For millions of PC users, the privacy-snatching programs known as spyware have been nothing but a headache as they swipe personal information, slow systems to a crawl and crash computers.
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Spyware problems continue to rise. Congress is stepping up to the plate--but will its efforts be more effective than CAN-SPAM?
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Companies and others that secretly install "spyware" programs on people's computers to quietly monitor their Internet activities would face hefty federal fines under a bill the House passed Tuesday.    The most egregious behaviors ascribed to the category of such software - secretly recording a person's computer keystrokes or mouse clicks - are already illegal under U.S...
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The findings come in a report from the newly formed Consumer Spyware Initiative, a joint effort by Dell and the non-profit Internet Education Foundation that aims to increase awareness of spyware.