FTC Files Complaint Against Alleged Spyware Distributor
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The FTC said it believes the companies induced computer users to buy its spyware-eradication software, sold for US$30 and bearing names such as Spy Wiper and Spy Deleter, after first infecting
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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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By Eric Benderoff, Chicago Tribune  Sep. 7--A federal lawsuit that pitted a Naperville attorney who wanted to bring class-action status against a company he says puts spyware on personal computers was dismissed Wednesday before reaching trial.
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p2pnet.net News:- The US Federal Trade Commission has filed its first spyware case against former self-styled Spam King Sanford Wallace, says the Center for Democracy and Technology, which made the original complaint last February.
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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission yesterday asked a federal court to shut down a New Hampshire operation, alleging that it disables users' computers to bully them into buying antispyware products.
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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 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.The settlement with CEO Group, doing business as Check Em Out, bars the company and its operator Scott Joseph from marketing or selling phone records, and it requires the company to give up $25,000 of its profits from selling phone records. Selling phone records to third parties is illegal under federal law, the FTC had charged.The FTC in May 2006 filed complaints in U.S. court against five Web-based companies that obtained and sold confidential phone records to third parties. In addition to the settlement with CEO Group, the FTC has settled two other cases and obtained a default judgment against a fourth company. The complaint against the fifth company is still active.The FTC&#39;s complaints came after complaints from privacy groups and members of the U.S. Congress about pretexting, when someone obtains a telephone customers&#39; records without permission under false pretexts. In many cases, companies offering phone records over the Internet were calling telephone carriers and pretending to be the targeted customer. In September 2006,&#160;Hewlett-Packard revealed it had been spying on some of its board members and journalists in an attempt to uncover the source of boardroom leaks, and HP officials later said their investigators had used pretexting to obtain phone records.The Telecommunications Act of 1996 prohibits customers&#39; phone records from being disclosed unless &quot;upon affirmative written request by the customer.&quot; The FTC charged the five Web-based companies of engaging in unfair business practices.The settlement with CEO Group prohibits it from obtaining, marketing or selling consumer phone records or other consumer personal information except where allowed by law, the FTC said in a news release. The settlement, approved by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, includes a judgment of $222,381, the amount the company earned by selling phone records, but the defendants said they were able to pay only $25,000. If the court finds that the defendants misrepresented their finances, the entire amount will be due, the FTC said.
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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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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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Movieland.com is the second company to be sued under Washington's spyware law.
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The Federal Trade Commission has taken the first step to crack down on the wave of spyware that is being installed on user&#39;s machines without their knowledge.
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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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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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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported to authorities Friday an e-mail circulating to employers that alleges to be a harassment complaint from the federal agency and contains links to a computer virus.
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StopBadware.org and Center for Democracy and Technology file FTC complaint against FastMP3Search.
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The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday filed the first case in the country against software companies accused of infecting computers with intrusive "spyware" and then trying to sell people the solution.
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The FTC has taken legal action in an effort to shut down Seismic Entertainment Productions and SmartBot.Net -- two companies that have become notorious as distributors of spyware.