Spyware maker to be shut down

ODYSSEUS Marketing is about to be shut down by the FTC which believes its software is just a cover for spyware.

The FTC claims that one bit of Odysseus software, called Clientman, lures users with the promise that it will give them free software that would make illegal peer-to-peer file sharing anonymous and hard to trace.

The FTC said that the program could not do that and installed spyware throughout a user's machine.

Clientman was nearly impossible to remove. Odysseus offered a removal tool but that installed additional spyware.

Odysseus is owned by a bloke called Walter Rines who insists he has done nothing wrong. The fact that he was a business partner with Sanford Wallace, a man known as the "Spam King" who has also been charged by the FTC seems to be counting against him.

He said that users clicked a box saying that they wanted all the spyware installed.

The FTC says that the spyware declaration was buried on the company's website, in a disused HTML file marked 'Beware of the Leopard'*

The commission has asked a federal judge in New Hampshire for a temporary restraining order to shut the company down.

More here. µ

* Reference to the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' not meant be be taken literally.