House Passes Bill Imposing Hefty Fines Over 'Spyware'
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'Spy Act' would crack down on companies that secretly install programs to monitor users' Internet activities.
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed separate legislation designed to combat spyware and the illegal online swapping of copyright material.
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Hackers who secretly install  "spyware" on others' computers and Internet users who copy  movies and music without permission could face up to three  years in prison under bills that advanced in Congress on  Wednesday.
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Organizations and law enforcement agencies fighting spyware are making progress, but new tools in an antispyware bill stalled in the U.S. Congress could improve the efforts, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday.One of the spyware bills passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, the Spy Act, would give the FTC authority to impose civil fines on companies that distribute spyware to consumers&#39; computers. The bill, along with the Internet Spyware Prevention (or I-SPY) Act, have&#160;stalled in the Senate&#160;since passing the House in May and June.The FTC has the authority to collect profits from spyware operations and collect money for consumer redress, but it lacks the authority to impose other fines, as it does when going after spammers, said Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, speaking at a spyware forum in Washington, D.C.Assigning a dollar figure to consumer harm is tricky in many spyware cases, especially when the spyware delivers pop-up advertisements to computers, Leibowitz said. It&#39;s sometimes difficult to get courts to assign large consumer damages to pop-up cases, he said.In some cases, spyware damages are assessed by judges &quot;who don&#39;t even use computers,&quot; said Dave Koehler, with the FTC&#39;s Bureau of Consumer Protection.The Spy Act would allow the FTC to fine spyware vendors up to $3 million for hijacking computers, delivering unwanted adware, and other violations, and $1 million for collecting personal data without permission, in addition to going after the vendor&#39;s profits and seeking consumer redress.Additional authority to impose civil fines would give the FTC &quot;an enormous deterrent,&quot; Leibowitz said.&quot;Right now, companies know that the worst they can do is lose their profits,&quot; he added. &quot;They&#39;re not going to get fined on top of that.&quot;The FTC has brought several spyware actions against companies. In February, the agency settled&#160;a case against adware distributor DirectRevenue. In that case, DirectRevenue settled for $1.5 million, based on its profits, but the founders of the company had received more than $20 million in venture-capital funding, Leibowitz said.While participants in the spyware forum said there continue to be many challenges, including a growing trend of foreign spyware vendors, the cost of spyware to U.S. consumers seems to be falling. Consumer Reports estimated that spyware cost U.S. consumers $2.6 billion in 2006, but only $1.7 billion in 2007, noted Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a supporter of StopBadware.org, a consumer-protection effort aimed at spyware and other malicious code.The drop in the cost of spyware can be attributed to a number of factors, Schwartz said. Antispyware technology is getting better, the FTC has taken action against spyware vendors, and StopBadware.org has distributed a&#160;list of malicious Web sites, he said. In addition, some states have taken action against spyware, and cybersecurity groups&#39; public education programs seem to be working, he said.But Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), noted that consumers may know more about spyware, but they aren&#39;t always acting on their knowledge. A survey released by the NCSA and McAfee earlier this month found 78 percent of respondents&#39; computers didn&#39;t have all three of what the NCSA calls the &quot;core protection&quot; software: anti-virus, antispyware, and firewall.&quot;We&#39;re not seeing a huge increase in the actual behavior change,&quot; he said.
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U.S. Federal Trade Commission says that a bill stalled in Congress would give it the tools it needs to fight spyware.
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The U.S. House of Representatives on  Tuesday voted to crack down on deceptive "spyware" that hides  in users' computers and secretly monitors their activities.
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Two bills designed to curb the proliferation of Internet &quot;spyware&quot; took another step toward law this week with overwhelming approval from the House of Representatives, but supporters said
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The U.S. House of Representatives on  Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to hike fines to as  much as $500,000 on broadcasters and entertainers who violate  decency limits on the air.
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The House of Representatives passed  a bill on Thursday that would provide congressional  authorization for President George W. Bush's warrantless  domestic spying program but subject it to new rules.
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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 U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to hike fines to as much as &#36;500,000 on broadcasters and entertainers who violate decency limits on the air.
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The House of Representatives passes a bill that would sic the feds on people using peer-to-peer networks to swap songs or movies. Copyright infringers may face up to three years in prison.
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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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The makers of programs that spy on what people do with their home PCs could face hefty fines in California.
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Blog: A new Senate bill is likely to vex Internet companies and advertisers, who have been warning for years that supposedly "anti-spyware" proposals could impose problematic regulations on legitimate businesses.
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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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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...