Spitzer Sues Intermix Media for Bundling Spyware

CousinLarry writes "Attorney General and corporate watchdog Eliot Spitzer has filed suit against Intermix Software, alleging that the company deviously and deceptively bundles spyware with its 'free' screensaver and game products. 'Spyware and adware are more than an annoyance,' Spitzer said. 'These fraudulent programs foul machines, undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers' efforts to remove them from their computers.'"

Comments

How to solve these problems.

[rice_burners_suck]

'These fraudulent programs foul machines, undermine productivity and in many cases frustrate consumers' efforts to remove them from their computers.'

As a matter of fact, I once had a run-in with exactly one of those spyware programs that frustrate your efforts to remove it from your computer. Mind you, this wasn't on any of my computers, which are Linux, FreeBSD, or Mac boxes. It was a secretary's computer at work, running Windows XP. Unfortunately, they still haven't listened to me about migrating away from that.

Turns out, this secretary went to some website using Internet Explorer, which we constantly tell people not to use. The site automatically installed some software without her knowledge. The complaint was that her computer was lagging and running significantly slower than normal. I checked the Registry, which should be called the Madnesstry, and found under various Startup locations that there were some ten similar programs running. I deleted all of the associated keys. Turns out, the software installs a daemon that watches the registry and reinstalls the key the instant you remove it. Trying to shut down that daemon or delete the actual EXE files from the computer is a futile effort. The damn thing monitors its own existance in every way that you can imagine.

Finally, I blew everything off the computer, installed Windows from CD, and personally locked down that box as far as you can say that Windows can be locked down, which isn't very far. Internet Explorer is hidden everywhere, and I actually put Internet Explorer icons that simply launch a window that says this computer is not authorized to launch internet explorer. Instead, there is Firefox and Opera to choose from. I also went ahead and created a blacklist of sites from here to Timbuktu. That solved most of the problems.

Intermix Stock impacted

[fugas]

Seems like Intermix's stock took a hard hit due to this news today.

Re:Spyware is hell

[BlackEyedSceva]

While those are a major source of spyware and adware, it is hard to avoid problems when you are using public computers at a school. High School kids seem to find emoticon programs, search bars, and mouse pointer software amazing. It's to bad those like to bring along there freinds Alexia, Gator, and Bonzai Buddy.

Educators fund Intermix

[Anonymous Coward]

In a very revealing article, it has been found that at least three educational retirement funds are invested with Intermix:

http://castlecops.com/article-5943-nested-0-0.html

TIAA-CREF

CALIFORNIA STATE TEACHERS RET SYS

NEW YORK ST TCHR RTRMT

Re:Spyware is hell (but pays to clean up after)

[Mycroft_VIII]

Believe me it's not all porn sites and such that dish out the spyware.
I've cleaned it off machines that got infected because a 12year old Wrastling fan VISITED some 'fan' site.
I watched the re-infection try to happen, his mom had heard the same story it was all from porn sites and figured her son had hit 'that age' (peuberty to ten minutes after death for most of us :) ).
To prove to his mom that's not what he was doing he showed us each of the sites he went to. When he hit this fan site the blocker I was using at the time went nuts with about 8 attempts to infect, two of them would have worked without any further action than simply viewing the site in pre-sp2 xp.
These days it's more often the aforementioned smilies and cursors and some simular crap.

Mycroft