FTC Shuts Down Fraudulent Antispyware Company

spewey writes "The Federal Trade Commission has shut down MaxTheater, Inc., alleging the company participated in fraudulent practices with its Spyware Assassin site, which purportedly scanned user machines for spyware and reported infections, even though no scan was done and in most cases, the user machine was clean. The site then offered the user a $30 product to remove the spyware, which the commission reports 'didn't do a thing.'"

Comments

Interesting to note...

[yuriismaster]

FTA:

"[MaxTheatre's Media] represent that they have "scanned" or otherwise examined the consumer's computer and have detected that spyware already resides on it."

I smell precedence!

Almost every single pop-up ad proclaims to have found spyware on my machine, and not all of them are SpywareAssassin. Can we use this to take down other phony antispyware companies?

Re:I'm Confused, Tell Me what to Think

[Tyler Eaves]

You're confused. The FTC is probably one of the most useful and generally non-sucky government agencies. It's like the various state attorney generals offices on a larger scale. Bascailly all they do is shut down scams and the like. You're thinking of the evil that is the F*C*C. No relation, other than both being government agencies.

"Shut down" is not enough

[sdo1]

There needs to be SEVERE penalties to discourage others from picking up where this left off. I vote for jail time for the company executives AND those developers who knew exactly what they were doing (or in this case, weren't doing).

The risk/reward ratio is still tilting too far toward reward for those who would defraud others using the internet.

-S