FTC settles with rogue antivirus vendor ByteHosting
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Federal Trade Commission last week settled its case against ByteHosting, an alleged vendor of phony antivirus software known as scareware. The FTC said the defendants tricked more than 1 million people into buying fake antivirus products.
In its judgment of nearly $1.9 million against James Reno and ByteHosting Internet Services, FTC agreed to reduce the amount to $116,000 due to the defendants' inability to pay. FTC said the full judgment represented the gross revenues realized from the alleged scam.
FTC said Reno and ByteHosting were part of a massive deceptive advertising scheme that tricked consumers into buying rogue web security products, including WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus.
The scheme allegedly relied on deceptive advertisements featuring bogus computer scans that falsely claimed to detect viruses, spyware and illegal pornography on consumers' computers.
Reno and ByteHosting are prohibited from using deceptive scareware advertising tactics and from installing malicious programs on consumers' computers. The settlement also permanently bars Reno and ByteHosting from ever again doing business with their co-defendants.
Microsoft said earlier this month that infections by scareware spiked dramatically worldwide in the second half of 2008.
Related News:
UK cops arrest two in Zbot Trojan case - 11.19.2009
The British Metropolitan Police took two suspected cyber criminals into custody earlier this month in connection with an investigation into the Zbot banking Trojan.
Facebook shakes up privacy policy in response to criticism - 11.19.2009
After a week-long comment period in which 7,000 Facebook users voiced their opinions, the giant social media network announced that it would overhaul and simplify its privacy policy.
Domain registrar VeriSign will receive "major security update" by 2011 - 11.19.2009
A well-known security vulnerability in the way .com and .net websites process DNS values - the way alphanumeric website names are translated into numeric web addresses - will be fixed, but not until 2011, according to a report from tech news website ZDNet.
Malware attack targeting fans of Twilight series - 11.18.2009
As with many recent hot news trends, the upcoming release of the second movie based on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books has attracted the attention not just of the vampire wannabes, but of actual cyber criminals as well.
Giant black-hat SEO campaign funnels victims to scareware sites - 11.18.2009
Security researchers say that cyber criminals have conducted a large-scale campaign to influence Google results, pushing malware-spreading sites higher on the list and dropping legitimate results to the bottom.
|
