D Squared To Stop Sending Pop-Ups

bizpile writes "D Squared Solutions, the company created by college students Anish Dhingra and Jeffrey Davis, has agreed to stop bombarding computer users with Internet pop-up ads to advertise its ad-blocking software, avoiding a court battle with the Federal Trade Commission. They were sending pop-up ads using the Messenger function enabled on many Windows operating systems. Their attorneys claimed the pair were not trying to extort consumers with their ads and only intended to send one a day to computer users. Lawyer Anthony J. Dain has said the ads are 'annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.'" (The San Diego Union-Tribune also has a story.)

Comments

"Annoyances"?

[penginkun]

So if I come 'round and kick them in the groin once a day and then leave, is that another of those 'annoyances (sic) you have to deal with in a free society'?

Seems like assault and battery, but really, it's not! And those ads they're sending, they only SEEM like an invasion of privacy, but trust me, they're not!

they spamed the wrong person

[E8086]

this was slashdot-ed back in Nov03 according to MSNBC

"Part of the reason Windows Messenger pop-ups caught the attention of the FTC is that one of the agency's commissioners received one of the advertisements at home"

Around a year ago(or more) one of my housemates, whose only firewall was the WinXP "it's almost a firewall," was getting several dozen a day. I told him to use a real firewall, think it was the free ZoneAlarm. Even after that he was still getting enough to have to tell me he was still getting them, possibly during windows startup before Zone Alarm could start or when he disabled it to run Kazaa. Even with the little extra cash I got installing free firewalls it wasn't worth the number of complaints I was getting.

Funny how you can net send spam millions of the world's computers and get away with it, but spam one gov't agent and you'll be promptly(after months of legal stuff) shutdown. Because of the inconvenience of not being able ignore them like traditional email spam I'm going to side with the FTC on this one.