FTC goes after alleged MySpace hijackers
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission
has asked a federal court to require an alleged Web page hijacking operation
to obey previous orders barring unfair and deceptive practices.
Walter Rines, business partner Sanford Wallace and Rines' company, Online
Turbo Merchant, diverted users of MySpace.com
to other Web sites and barraged them with ads to earn advertising commissions,
according to court papers filed with the FTC. The defendants used pagejacking,
phishing and other methods to target MySpace users, in violation of a previous
court order, the FTC said in a news release.
The FTC, in a Jan. 23 filing, asked the U.S. District Court for the District
of New Hampshire to order the defendants to give up the money they earned from
their MySpace scheme.
Rines' listed phone number in New Hampshire was disconnected.
In October 2005, the FTC charged Odysseus Marketing and its owner, Rines, with
luring consumers to their Web site by offering free software, including a program
that supposedly allowed them to engage in anonymous peer-to-peer file sharing.
The software was bundled with spyware that intercepted and replaced search results
and barraged consumers' computers with pop-up ads, the FTC said. The software
also stole users' personal information, and users were unable to locate or uninstall
the spyware through reasonable means, the FTC said.
The FTC alleged that the defendants' software captured consumers' personal
information and transmitted the information to the defendants' servers. Consumers
were unable to locate or uninstall the spyware through reasonable means, the
agency charged. The court ordered a preliminary halt to these practices pending
trial, and in October 2006 Odysseus and Rines settled the charges by stipulating
to a permanent injunction.
The permanent injunction prohibited the defendants from redirecting consumers'
computers; from changing any Web browser's default home page; and from modifying
or replacing the functions of any computer application. It required Rines and
his company to obtain consumers' express consent before downloading or distributing
any content to their computers.
The permanent injunction also imposed a US$1.75 million judgment, and all but
$10,000 was suspended based on the defendants' inability to pay.
In its recent filing, the FTC alleges that Rines, his company and Wallace knew
of the permanent injunction and violated that order by diverting users from
MySpace.com to their Web sites.
IDG News Service
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