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FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm
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."
You know, when I saw in the article that AOL was automatically turning off users' Messenger Service, I wondered if that was stepping over the line. After all, we Slashdotters *hate* it when someone messes with our configuration without our permission!
Then, I read the process, and remembered doing the same thing to turn off the oh-so-obvious "Your print job is complete" messages from the laser printer in the next cube. It would be so easy for a non-geek to either screw up or freeze like a deer in the headlights:
Beales recommends that current Windows users manually shut the service off to protect themselves from unwanted pop-ups.
To disable Messenger:
* Click Start, and then click Control Panel (or point to Settings, and then click Control Panel).
* Double-click Administrative Tools.
* Double-click Services.
* Double-click Messenger.
* In the Startup type list, click Disabled. Click Stop, and then click OK.
Not to stereotype AOLers, but considering what their tech support would face if newbies were given those instructions, I think they did the right thing to shut off a service that nobody uses anyway.
I'm trying to think of why the Messenger Service was a good thing in the first place. I recall way back before Win95, we used to prank each other with dire "system messages". Was that all it was ever good for?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I posted this on an ASK Slashdot a while back.
::History::
Its funny how the goverment doesn't seem to care until they get experience it for them selves? That fast against the messanger pop up stuff.
Wooooo..
How long will it take until they can't stand spam in their email and they decided to finally decide to take care of it. How about all of us legimate email users get together and spam the FCC and maybe we can piss them off anough to do something about it.
No.
I wrote this really amusing application a time ago, it listened to the ports used for MS win msg, and if it received a valid message, it replied once every 5 seconds, 600 times with the same message + the text "\nQuit spamming ffs!". Quite efficient.
Why? Well, my son is a student at a computer college, and he was sickin tired of people thinking that broadcasting MS windows messenger popus was fun, so he asked me for a tool to repent the spammers.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Last time I checked, I seem to recall they said "You really shouldn't disable Windows Messenger; buy a firewall instead." (Followed by instructions on how to disable.) Now they seem to be admitting it wasn't necessary in the first place here
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
An entire business set up on the basis that Microsoft leaves this stupid thing turned on. They get caught, (and yes the burgler is still responsible even if the door is left open) and Microsoft gets absolutely nothing, no "you should be more careful leaving un-needed services like that on by default it just encourages them" no bad press coverage about how all these things (pop up windows, pop-up messages, VB viri) could have been prevented if microsoft had changed 1 line of code.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
blockmessenger.com
defeatpopupspam.com
easypopupblocker.com
endads.com
fightpopups.com
I guess it's like the big corporate guys trying to buy up all the yourcorporatenameheresucks.com domains. On the other hand, maybe selling pop-up blockers to defeat their own spam tool was their way of making money from both sides of the equation>
Sell pop-up spam tools to the marketing firms, and sell blockers to the consumers.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
So poor people are the only ones who can't complain about ads in their neighborhood?
A piece of property with a billboard on it in Chicago costs tens of thousands of dollars. I can't afford that, neither can anybody in my neighborhood.
How else do we deal with our polluted visual environment?
I actually wrote something similar, but not quite as annoying, for IRC quite a while ago. Every time someone would spam (channel-wide notice, or one of those obviously infected-with-a-trojan messsages), it would send that IP a net msg saying "Your computer is infected with a virus, please download an anti-virus tool and fix it"..
I don't really know if it was effective or not, and likely a lot of people couldn't recieve it anyways (behind firewall, going offline before it could complete, etc), but at the least, it would annoy them a little bit and hopefully make them look into it, at least.
Speak before you think
To me the most interesting part is Microsoft's response:
In other words, despite all the hype about security and code reviews, Microsoft just doesn't view exploitable *features* as holes until the exploit actually occurs. The idea of trying to make the systems they release secure from the start still hasn't taken hold.
But you are hard-pressed to claim that the billboard interfered with your work or cost you money.
He never claimed that. He's claiming that the billboard has cost him peace of mind that he might have had had there been no billboard. It's an intangible, but an important one. People like to live and work in pleasant surroundings. Why should we let others impinge on that for no other purpose than to hawk their products?
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
Not that I totally disagree with you in this instance, but one could also say, "why the HELL do users allow these packets from the internet, as they are a LAN service only, is beyond me". I'd rather have the freedom to decide what I can do with my connection than have someone else "secure" it for me.
/. user that a fair comment, but what about the other 99.9% of internet users who don't read /.? They don't have the faintest idea that their Netbios/RPC ports are wide open, but wouldn't it be better for us 0.1% of people if ISP's did block such traffic for everybody?
As a
If all ISP's blocked RPC & Netbios (to name a few), what effect would this have on you?
None or very little
Now think of the advantages that this could have for the other 99.9% of internet users?
Oooh, blaster and welchia would have gone unnoticed.
Now think of the advantages that blocking ports of the 99.9% of the internet users would have on us 0.1% of internet users?
Well they wouldn't have worms on their systems flooding our networks masses of ICMP traffic
Do you still think it's a bad idea for ISP's to be blocking traffic on ports that are deemed as LAN services?
You can't walk up to a 5 year old and start swearing at the top of your lungs
... protects commercial speech from unwarranted governmental regulation. Commercial expression not only serves the economic interest of the speaker, but also assists consumers and furthers the societal interest in the fullest possible dissemination of information. In applying the First Amendment to this area, we have rejected the "highly paternalistic" view that government has complete power to suppress or regulate commercial speech. "[P]eople will perceive their own best interests if only they are well enough informed, and . . . the best means to that end is to open the channels of communication rather than to close them. . . ." Even when advertising communicates only an incomplete version of the relevant facts, the First Amendment presumes that some accurate information is better than no information at all.
Actually, yes you can.
or tell every woman you meet that you'll be raping her later tonight.
Again, you can, though since rape is criminal, a significant factor will be whether you meant it, and whether they think you mean it. If there were no real likelihood of a threat (e.g. you're just some schmuck with Tourette's) then it's not regulable.
I think you should really read the famous case of Cohen v. California, 403 US 15 (1971), and probably Brandenberg v. Ohio, 395 US 444 (1969).
The ONLY reason advertising is allowed is because we, as a society, permit it. It has nothing to do with some absolute concept of "free speech" that doesn't exist in any country I've ever heard of.
Well, then listen up:
The First Amendment
That was the Supreme Court in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Comm'n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980).
I'm beginning to wonder if you know anything about First Amendment law whatsoever.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This would be more accurately classed as yet another stupid on-by-default, security-decreasing idiocy on the part of Microsoft. Why the OS would install with this on by default is a mystery to me.
I'm just glad MS didn't decide to remove it from future versions of the Windows. I've actually used this feature at work and found it quite useful.
For instance, I've had to sit in on training classes as few times that one of our vendors was putting on for some of our users. It was a fly-on-the-wall type thing; I was there to get feedback from our users, primarily.
A few times some configuration shortcomming became apparent and people would start wispering to each other. Rather than let it go and wreck the class, I quickly fixed the problems on each machine in the room and sent one of these messages to each PC in the room, telling them it was fixed.
I didn't have to stop the guest trainer, I didn't have walk over and stop anyone from paying attention to him, and I could I easily communicate that the problem was identified and resolved. It was sort of cool.
Normally I would have just e-mailed them, but we don't have users use their accounts in training, none of the training accounts have mailboxes.
That's how it should be used, I think. Too bad the FTC doesn't take as much interest in browser pop-up advertisers. I've seen IE popup ads for this crap. Which appears to be similar in concept only the delivery is through a different pop-up. The product/service looks just about as useless. You could accomplish everything they're trying sell you on with add/remove programs and dumping IE for a browser that deoesn't subject you to this type of torture.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.