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FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the thats-just-crazy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that's been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

10 of 472 comments (clear)

  1. one of their own commissioners... by Threni · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

    There's a lesson for us all, there.

  2. Not quite right. by Delphix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "POP-UP ADVERTISING is a fact of life," said Howard Beales, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "But one company has taken pop-ups beyond annoyance."

    No it's not. I use Safari (Mac OS) and Mozilla (Linux/Windows) for all my web browsing. And I use Trillian, Gaim, or Fire for IM.

    So no, POP-UP Advertising is deifnetly not a fact of life. It's just that too many people are unaware how easy it is to get away from.

  3. Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements by Accord+MT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains. Hour by hour, our eyes and ears are bombarded with advertisements, but we accept it all as a fact of life. Why do we allow this tresspass into our daily lives? Why is it considered acceptable to allow companies to push products in our faces every second of every day? Why don't we have laws against advertising?

    If someone dumps raw sewage in the streets, the cops will take them away. If someone plays their boom-box too loud in my neighborhood, they will eventually be fined. So why do we allow billboards, huge store signs, and ads on cars, busses, and park benches to pollute our visual environment?

    I should be able to go for a walk or ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place. Don't you agree? Is some corporation's desire to sell a product really more important than our desire of a peaceful environment?

    If I stood outside your house all day shouting "Buy My Product!!!" over and over you'd get kind of angry wouldn't you? So why don't you get angry when corporations do the same thing via huge billboards? What exactly is the difference?

    1. Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements by dillon_rinker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What exactly is the difference?
      1. Humans have free speech
      2. Corporations are legally human
      3. ???
      4. PROFIT! (Seriously. If you can declare a personal income of several billion a year, YOU TOO can engage in free speech.)

    2. Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements by Quasar1999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your argument is flawed. I am not forced to look at ads on billboards, or even tv... I am forced to listen to you yelling buy my product, and a boombox, etc...

      The difference with pop-up ads, is they are unwanted, and cannot be ignored... If I go to a website with pop-ups, and I don't like them, I can never come back... but with this pop-up advertising, they were there, without any action on my part, and directly interrupted me.

      --

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      Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
    3. Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements by fmaxwell · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Shame on us! We are intruded upon every day and no one complains. Hour by hour, our eyes and ears are bombarded with advertisements, but we accept it all as a fact of life.

      The key difference here is that you paid for your PC and no advertiser, whether a spammer or a pop-up advertiser, has a right to steal your bandwidth or storage.

      Don't like ads while listening to the radio? Then pay for satellite radio and listen to ad-free stations. Don't like ads during movies you view on TV? Then watch the movies on pay-per-view. But it's idiotic to watch a television station to which you send no money and then get mad that they show ads. Of course they show ads! It's how they finance the operation of their television station.

      If you don't like a billboard, then buy the property on which it is located and tear down the billboard. But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.

  4. Targets by rf0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well this is like the story a few days ago about an FBI agent who was spammed about a credit card scam and got the women arrested. Prehaps things like the FTC should have one individual who they try to get on every mailing list / get target by spammers. Least that way something could be done

    Rus

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    Cheap UK and US VPS
  5. Re:It's a temporary restraining order.... by ERJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not Redmond disciples...all software developers.

    No offense, but I don't want to be partially responsible when someone abuses something I have written. Sure, you will say, "write better software" but the thing is, even perfectly written software, when used for something it was not designed for, can have bad effects. Should we blaim the person who wrote ping if it is used in some sort of denial of service attack?

  6. What took so long? by thedillybar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is ridiculous. I understand why it's difficult to block spam: the sender makes an effort to be anonymous and unknown. They aren't recognized as legitimate companies and many of them are overseas and not subject to many laws.

    Read the title. "FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm" This is a firm in the United States with one heck of a business model. If what they're doing isn't illegal, it needs to be. The idea that a company could do this for so long and scam so many people certainly doesn't prove the effectiveness of our system to me. Something needs to change.

    I hope we all do some research and think twice the next time we hit the polls. Matters like these are the responsibility of many various lawmakers. Let's hope they can earn all those figures and get some work done at the same time. Sure it's difficult, but suck it up for once.

  7. Re:No, it does not by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We use them over the 'net all the time, we just have our firewall allow only from trusted sites.

    The NET family of commands are more useful than just popup messages.

    It's not up to the ISP to block ANYTHING. What's inside those TCP or UDP packets is none of their fucking business.

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    I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!