The Federal Trade Commission has frozen the assets of an operation it charged with using bogus scans and spam to market an anti-spyware program.
Defendants Trustsoft Inc. and its Houston-based principal, Danilo Ladendorf sent pop-up and e-mail messages informing consumers that their computers had been remotely "scanned" and that spyware had been detected, according to the FTC.
The operation aggressively and deceptively marketed its alleged anti-spyware product SpyKiller, using the Web sites of affiliates, banner and pop-up ads, and spam but ultimately had not performed any such scans, the FTC further alleged.
The defendants’ marketing materials urged consumers to access the SpyKiller Web site to get a free scan for spyware. While the SpyKiller "scan" was running, the program displayed a status report entitled "Spyware Found on your PC:" that included a category called "Live Spyware Processes."
In fact, the FTC alleges, this category deceptively identified anti-virus programs, word processing programs, or any of the processes running on the system as spyware. Then, even though the scan itself was free, consumers had to pay roughly $39.95 to enable SpyKiller’s "removal" capabilities.
The FTC complaint alleged the software failed to remove significant amounts of spyware, including specified spyware defendants claimed on their Web site to remove. The agency alleges that the deceptive claims violate the FTC Act.
The FTC also alleged that spam messages promoting the SpyKiller software contained similar deceptive claims, failed to identify themselves as advertising, used false "from" lines, gave no valid postal addresses, and failed to provide consumers with notice of and the ability to "opt-out," in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.
The court entered a temporary restraining order on June 1 and a stipulated preliminary injunction order on June 14. The agency is seeking a permanent ban on the deceptive claims and will ask the court to order consumer redress from the defendants.
