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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.'"
with its Spyware Assassin site
I'm getting a blank page with the title "New Page 1"
Here is a google cache.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
> in most cases, the user machine was clean.
Yeah, right. Where the hell did they get clean windoze boxen from??
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
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?
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.
TODO: Something witty here...
And so on... Any others?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The FTC should have put up an 0WN3D message explaining why the site was taken down, and what to do if you were defrauded by the company in the past.
Much more informative than a blank page, and it's what the MPAA does for sites it takes down (ie. lokitorrent.com)
Then again spywareassassin.com still resides at the same IP address (66.172.78.113) that it did before, so the order was probably to remove all content. Perhaps an A record change or domain transfer to an FTC controlled server (with informational message) is iminent.
- Cary
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play
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
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I'm glad to see spyware assassin gone, but the extortionware I see most on computers I work on is ad destroyer. Let's hope the FTC b!tch slaps them next.
for adding to your hosts file (if you havent already)
h tm
http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-spyware.
The FTC did not try to shut down spyware. They shut down a site that pretended to clean people's computers of spyware.
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Don't all those ads saying "Your computer is infected! Clean it now!" (or something like that) and "Windows is running slow! speed it up Blah blah blah bullshit bullshit" fall into this same category?
Hopefully this will have a positive affect for those of us who develop free software but have to constantly deal with the paranoia of malware and spyware.
Free Firefox news reader.
CoolWebSearch / Adzilla / Look2Me / Miraclesearch?
Personally I see this as doing really nothing for (or against) spyware.
Honestly, when I read this, I had flashbacks to all of those TV news investigative reports of mechanics, exterminators, plumbers, etc. who climb under/behind your car/sink/house and come back with "evidence" of a problem that you need to pay them $$$ to fix.
So... back to the auto shops with the bums! That's what I say! :)
Except there is no way of PROVING that the "healing rock" does NOT actually heal some people.
As far as I know with software it is a little easier to test it to see exactly what it does and does not do. If it claims to "remove spyware" and does not, it is a pretty open and shut case that the company selling it is misrepresenting what it does.
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
I'd call it "moronware". It's designed to troll for idiot users who believe everything they see and fall for stupid schemes. We can lump the Nigerians into this category too, with their stupid cashier's check and phony inheiritence schemes.
I've said before, I really have less of a problem with these types of unscrupulous operations. They're like financial darwinism, and anyone stupid enough to fall for them deserves to be separated from their money.
Ironically, there are lots of other schemes that defraud the populace that are based on deception that are protected by the government. I look at this crackdown as the government protecting idiots from small-time operators so that big corporations can continue to prey on them.
Wake me up when the FTC starts cracking down on the overwhelming deceptive ad practices of all the major U.S. corporations.
These are the guys that made Spyware Assassin. Their other products should be next...
twits. But then again it's handy that criminals are stupid by default, it makes them easier to catch.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
If someone wants to buy a "spirit healing rock" from me, why shouldn't he be able to? If he's dumb enough to buy it, well, what do they say about a fool and his money?
There's a difference between making vague, general, or unproveable claims (one way or another) and outright fraud. A "spirit healing rock" can't be tested to prove what it actually does. You could advertise the rock as "using mystical powers to make you feel better" and probably get away with it. But the moment you slap on a claim that is demonstrably false like "this rock uses mystical powers to cure cancer" then you are committing fraud and will likely get busted.
And while it's awfully popular right now to complain about "government interfering with business", I think that most people realize that a certain amount of "interference" (Republican-speak for "oversight") is desirable to protect the populace from criminaly fraudulent behavior. I don't recall anybody complaining about government interfering with business in cases like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Healthsouth, Global Crossing, etc. Neither do I recall much complaining when the government bailed out the airlines after 9/11 to keep them in business.
Wow, that's a hellova pr0n list there. You've just made my saturday night!
>You're thinking of the evil that is the
>F*C*C. No relation, other than both being
>government agencies.
Yeah. The FCC is currently controlled by the Servants of Cthulhu, while the FTC is run by the Bavarian Illuminati. Completely different.
(Note to self: Stop visiting sjgames.com just before posting to Slashdot....)
are you taking the piss? I guess so. the problem with Americans (my assumption is you are) is that when you think "no one could the THAT stupid" you often turn out to be wrong.
Sure, Spyware Assasian did nothing, but there are even worse pseudo-anitspyware products out there. The article links to this chart, where PC Mag found spyware removal tools that added additional spyware or did things that aren't real good for Windows, like delete one of the driver folders.
So it looks like there are even shadier companies out there
I have blog like everyone else
Was that falling for a troll, or a counter-troll? Perhaps you might have noticed that this was titled "The Libertarian Response"? Libertarians are neither Republicans nor Democrats. They're a different political party entirely, generally agreeing with liberals on issues pertaining to the individual (such as drugs, abortion, and so on), and agreeing with the conservatives on economic issues (such as fiscal responsibility (Bush aside), corporate regulation, and the minimum wage).
Commonly, libertarians make a distinction between the personal and economic aspects of liberal thought; the popular Nolan Chart makes the political spectrum a plane, rather than a line.
Or, as I usually put it: in legislative sessions, the Conservatives sit to the right, the Liberals sit on the left, and the Libertarians are the baboons swinging from the chandeliers. (And it's suprising how many Libertarians will cheerfully agree with that description when asked....)
The libertarian position stated was a trifle extreme... but does thus highlight the problems with the libertarian's more extreme free-market faction.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.