Online marketer agrees to halt spyware ads
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Sanford Wallace and his two companies have agreed to stop distributing spyware while he fights a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
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The non-profit Internet Education Foundation, along with computer maker Dell, launch a campaign to help consumers fend off spyware. Their first step is to publish tips and tutorials to help internet users stay safe.
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An online advertiser that drove traffic to its Web sites by sending out spam with misleading subject lines has agreed to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)&#160;complaint charging that it failed to tell consumers they had to spend money to receive so-called free products, the FTC announced Wednesday.The settlement requires Member Source Media to disclose the costs and obligations associated with the advertised products and services, and bars the company from sending e-mail that violates the CAN-SPAM Act, which regulates the sending of unsolicited e-mail. The company must also pay $200,000 in civil penalties, according to the settlement approved Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.Member Source Media -- doing business as ConsumerGain.com, PremiumPerks.com, FreeRetailRewards.com, and GreatAmericanGiveaways.com -- and the company&#8217;s owner, Chris Sommer, used deceptive spam and online advertising to lure customers to its Web sites, the FTC alleged.The company used e-mail subject lines such as, &quot;Congratulations. You&#39;ve won an iPod Video Player,&quot; &quot;Here are 2 free iPod Nanos for You: confirm now,&quot; and &quot;Second Attempt: Target Gift Card Inside,&quot; the FTC said in a press release. The company&#39;s Web-based ads contained similar offers: &quot;CONGRATULATIONS! You Have Been Chosen To Receive a FREE GATEWAY LAPTOP.&quot;When consumers arrived at Member Source Media&#39;s Web pages, they were led through a series of ads for goods and services from third parties.To qualify for their &quot;free products,&quot; consumers would have to first wade through pages of &quot;optional&quot; offers. Once they navigated those pages, they had to participate in a series of third-party promotions requiring them to do things such as purchase products, subscribe to satellite television service, or apply for multiple credit cards, the FTC said.Member Source Media&#39;s failure to disclose material facts was deceptive and violated the FTC Act, the FTC said. In addition, the agency charged that deceptive subject lines in Member Source Media&#39;s spam e-mails violated the federal CAN-SPAM Act.The settlement requires that Member Source Media clearly disclose in its ads and on its Web pages that consumers have to spend money or incur other obligations to qualify for a free product or service. The settlement also requires the company to provide a list of the obligations a consumer is likely to incur to qualify for their chosen item -- such as applying for credit cards or purchasing products.
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Millions of consumers have been struggling with a recent surge in what computer experts call spyware or adware -- electronic hitchhikers with hidden programs that hijack hard drives.-The Washington Post
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A prominent Internet safety organization and leading computer-maker Dell Inc. launched a campaign Friday to help consumers fend off "spyware," software that can cause sluggish computer performance or popup ads and secretly monitor the activities of Internet users.
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(InfoWorld) - An operation that allegedly installed illegal spyware on computers will give more than US$2 million to settle a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint. The FTC has obtained a settlement order against Enternet Media Inc., Conspy & Co. Inc., Lida Rohbani, Nima Hakimi and Baback Hakimi, all based in California, the agency announced Wednesday. The defendants distributed software called Search Miracle, Miracle Search, EM Toolbar, EliteBar and Elite Toolbar, the FTC said. In an order issued by Judge Christine Snyder of the U.S District Court for Central California, the defendants are prohibited from interfering with computer use, such as distributing software code that tracks Internet activity, changes browser settings and inserts new advertising toolbars onto browsers. The defendants also are permanently prohibited from making misleading representations regarding the performance, features, and cost, of any software, including misrepresenting that the code is an Internet browser upgrade or other computer security software, music, song, lyric or cell phone ring tone. The Web sites of the defendants and their affiliates caused installation boxes to pop up on consumersâ computer screens, the FTC said in its complaint. In one variation of the scheme, the boxes offered a variety of freeware, including music files, cell phone ring tones, photographs, wallpaper and song lyrics. In another, the boxes warned that consumersâ Internet browsers were defective, and offered free browser upgrades or security patches. Users who downloaded the supposed freeware or security upgrades did not receive what they were promised, Instead, their computers were infected with spyware that interfered with their computers and was difficult to uninstall, the FTC said. The defendants' software tracked Internet activity, changed home-page settings and inserted a large frame onto browser windows that displayed advertisements, the FTC said. At the FTCâs request, the court froze the operationâs assets last fall and ordered it shut down. The settlement requires the defendants to give up just over $2 million of their spyware-related profits and includes a suspended judgment of $8.5 million. The FTC brought the case with assistance from Microsoft Corp., Webroot Software Inc. and Google Inc., the agency said.
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A US federal judge has ordered a man dubbed the Spam King to disable so-called spyware programs. US District Judge Joseph DiClerico issued a temporary restraining order against one of the world&#39;s worst spammers
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American lawmakers are close to outlawing the making of spyware that smuggles its way on to your PC.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Cingular Wireless, Priceline.com, and Travelocity.com have settled with New York State's attorney general after the state accused them of contributing toÂ the spread of adware. The companies agreed to pay fines and take steps to help keep adware off users' PCs but did not admit guilt in the case. It marked the first time law enforcement had held advertisers responsible for ads delivered via adware, according to a statement by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office. DirectRevenue actually installed the adware, which monitored users' Web activity and collected data they typed onto Web forms in addition to delivering ads, the attorney general's office said. The adware was very hard to remove from PCs, it alleged. The stateÂ sued DirectRevenueÂ in April 2006 but found that the three big-name companies and others had paid the third party hundreds of thousands of dollars to have their ads delivered via adware, it said. The attorney general found the companies engaged in deceptive business practices. "Advertisers can no longer insulate themselves from liability by turning a blind eye to how their advertisements are delivered," Cuomo said in a prepared statement. Under the agreement reached Monday, the advertisers will have to ensure any company that delivers their ads online does the following: -- discloses the name of any adware program and bundled software; -- brands each ad with a prominent brand name or icon; -- describes the adware and gets the user's consent to download and run it; -- makes it practical for users to remove the adware; -- obtains consent to keep sending ads to users who used to have the adware on their systems; -- make their affiliates meet all these requirements. The three companies also will make payments for penalties and investigatory costs, the state said: Priceline and Cingular will each pay $35,000 and Travelocity will pay $30,000.
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A security company has identified a Trojan horse program that replaces Google text advertisements on Web pages with ads from another source, depriving Google of revenue and potentially causing problems for end users.Google may be powerless to stop the trick since it involves the modification of an internal PC file, called the hosts file, that is used to match domain names of Web sites with IP (Internet protocol) addresses, said Romanian security company BitDefender.When a person visits a Web site, the browser checks the hosts file to see if it has an IP address for a particular domain name. If the hosts file is corrupted or hijacked, the browser can be directed to fetch a different Web page than the one the user intended to.Modifying the hosts file can be done for legitimate reasons. For example, PC users can change the hosts to block banner ads served from known ad networks. When a Web page tries to contact an ad server, the request is diverted by the hosts file and no ad appears.BitDefender said in an advisory this particular malware directs a browser to download advertisements from a different server than Google&#39;s ad server.BitDefender named the malware Trojan.Qhost.WU and said it is not spreading fast and poses a &quot;medium&quot; risk of damage. It did not say how the Trojan is being circulated, and company representatives did not return a call for comment.Besides costing Google ad revenue, there is a danger that those replacement advertisements could contain links to sites with malicious software, BitDefender said. Web site owners who buy ads through Google, as well as Google itself, can lose out on both Web traffic and revenue if people are diverted from its ads.There is not much that Google can do for those who download the malware. However, security products such as BitDefender&#39;s can detect and remove it.Without commenting on the Trojan specifically, Google said it removes Web sites from its search index that contain malware.&quot;We have canceled customer accounts that display ads re-directing users to malicious sites or that advertise a product violating our software principles,&quot; the company said in a statement.
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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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LEADING computer-maker Dell has joined with a prominent internet group in the US to launch a campaign to help consumers fend off spyware.
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FTC alleges that Sanford Wallace distributed spyware that created pop-up ads on victims&#39; computers in order to sell his company&#39;s anti-spyware software.
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The operator of two computer privacy services agrees to pay up to $1 million to settle charges of using deceptive marketing techniques and selling personal information.
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Under an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, a man known as the "Spam King" will stop infecting computers with advertising programs until a federal lawsuit against him is resolved.