Fake anti-spyware firm sued

Rob Updegrove 31 Jan, 2006 at 4:20pm ET Article published in Tech

Washington state’s Attorney General has sued a New York company which claims to clean PCs of spyware, but is really a spam generator instead.

The Washington state attorney general’s office has filed a lawsuit against Secure Computer LLC of White Plains, N.Y., alleging that the company’s anti-spyware software falsely claimed that computers were infected in an attempt to encourage computer users to pay $49.95 for a fully-working version. According to the suit, the spyware cleaner does not remove spyware from the PC, but rather modifies settings on the computer.

The law suit claimed that some of the emails sent pretended to come from MSN Member Services with the subject line “Special Security Alert for MSN Members,” giving the false impression that the emails were being sent by Microsoft security personnel. Other warnings are alleged to have been sent to computers running Windows Messenger, to force a pop-up message to appear on recipients’ machines, posing as a message from the Windows operating system.

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Source: SCMagazine.com

Comments

4 Oct 2003 ~ 9:22pm seversphere www.em-dc.com

Electron Microscope III
4 Oct 2003 ~ 9:26pm scott Thanks!!
4 Oct 2003 ~ 9:32pm seversphere when you first run the program the options window should open with it. If not it's the microscope icon to the upper left. First page of the options window has a computer icon near the bottom right and that's to browse to your FAH3Console.exe file for each machine. If you use the FAH3.25-Console-beta.exe then rename it to the regular one so EMIII will pick it up. After adding a client check the box that shows the path and highlight the name before scrolling to the other option pages so those modifications take effect for that box.
4 Oct 2003 ~ 10:06pm mmonnin Hmm I will look for Fold Monitor. Site may have changed or something.
4 Oct 2003 ~ 10:18pm scott Now I do not have to run all over the house to see what is going on.

Thanks !!
5 Oct 2003 ~ 11:18am mmonnin I updated some things and added a lot of other things. Several new monitoring programs and such.
31 Jan 2006 ~ 4:20pm GHoosdum Washington state's Attorney General has sued a New York company which claims to clean PCs of spyware, but is really a spam generator instead.

The Washington state attorney general's office has filed a lawsuit against Secure Computer LLC of White Plains, N.Y., alleging that the company's anti-spyware software falsely claimed that computers were infected in an attempt to encourage computer users to pay $49.95 for a fully-working version. According to the suit, the spyware cleaner does not remove spyware from the PC, but rather modifies settings on the computer.

The law suit claimed that some of the emails sent pretended to come from MSN Member Services with the subject line "Special Security Alert for MSN Members," giving the false impression that the emails were being sent by Microsoft security personnel. Other warnings are alleged to have been sent to computers running Windows Messenger, to force a pop-up message to appear on recipients' machines, posing as a message from the Windows operating system.

Submitted by: ?

Source: SCMagazine.com
31 Jan 2006 ~ 6:04pm hold up, the database has gone crazy or something....SHORTY!!!
31 Jan 2006 ~ 6:08pm airbornflght Yeh.. this is a test..its grabbing data from the latest post and putting it into the news threads on the front page...
1 Feb 2006 ~ 6:38am bikerboy WTF!! this is just weird

bikerboy