FTC Fines Spammers

So it seems that the Federal Trade Commission is hitting back at spammers. They will be collecting millions in fines. I like that, and hope the fines sting.

From the AP here:

CONCORD, N.H. – A federal court has ordered a man who was at the center of the nation’s first “spyware” case to give up $4 million in ill-gotten gains.

Sanford Wallace was accused by the Federal Trade Commission of running an operation that infected computers with software that caused flurries of pop-up ads. It then tried to sell consumers cures called “Spy Wiper” and “Spy Deleter” for $30.

The order issued Wednesday by U.S. District Court in New Hampshire bars Wallace and his company, SmartBot.net Inc., from spreading spyware.

The FTC first accused Wallace of the spyware operation in a 2004 lawsuit. Last year, under an agreement with the FTC, Wallace agreed to stop infecting computers with the advertising programs.

Wallace headed a company called Cyber Promotions in the 1990s that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails daily to consumers, earning him the nicknames “Spamford” and “spam king.” He left the company after lawsuits from America Online and CompuServe.

In a related case Thursday, the government reached a settlement with Jared Lansky, an ad broker who disseminated ads containing Wallace’s spyware. He is to give up $227,000 in ill-gotten gains.

In another case, Walter Rines of Stratham and his company, Odysseus Marketing, was also barred from spreading spyware. The FTC plans to ask the court to order them to give up their ill-gotten gains.

This Wallace guy was a creep. He took advantage of flaws in Internet Explorer to install malware on a system that made users think they had been hacked, which would prompt them to install Wallace’s stupid fake spyware programs.

From Tech Web Here:

Wallace, who in 1998 swore off spam, was ordered by a federal court to give back $4,089,500 made by convincing consumers to pay $30 per copy for Spy Wiper and Spy Deleter, two purported anti-spyware programs.

Users were duped into thinking they needed the software because Wallace exploited an Internet Explorer vulnerability to install real spyware to their PCs, including a small program that opened the CD-ROM tray and displayed the message “If your cd-rom drive s open . . .You DESPERATELY NEED to rid your system of spyware pop-ups IMMEDIATELY! Spyware programmers can control your computer hardware if you failed to protect your computer right at this moment! Download Spy Wiper NOW!