Slashdot Mirror
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."
I wonder if the same logic could be applied to charge spammers advertising spam blockers with extortion? How about HTML popup ads for popup blockers?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
let 'em spam the windows users...it'll encourage them to make the switch...
Grin... you need MozillaFirebird. Block those popups, you'll never go back to Internet Exploder, er, Internet Infector, errr, I mean, Internet Explorer.
I was tempted to do something "drastic" when I got a spam like this one time. Stupid bastard had spammed through windows messenger service. It was extortion. He basically was telling people that in order to get him to stop harrassing them with pop-ups that they would have to go to his site and buy some web security software. Norton I think. I checked into it and Mr Dumbass had registered his domain with real info...including home address and phone #. I forwarded the information to Symantic that some douche bag was giving them a bad rep by associating them with extortion. Then I emailed Mr Dumbass that I had his home address and info and would be forwarding it to his local authorities so they could charge him with extortion. I also told him that he had entered my system with non-approved system resources and as such he was committing computer related hacking activities. He replied back that the intent of windows messenger was that lame ass spammers like him could spam people. I harrassed him a little bit, but basically, I was just making idle threats. I doubt his local authorities would give a fuck. The feds certainly wouldn't care, even though it was a interstate related extortion scheme. I ought to look up his info. I could post it here so we could all give him a call and tell him what a punk ass bitch he is.