- Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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25 watts is the good old days now - Bob Colwell, former Intel chief architect
FTC shutters scareware scam
THE US FTC (Federal Trade Commission) got a court injunction Wednesday to shut down a burgeoning Internet insecurity scheme, which falsely claimed that its computer scans had detected malware and duped users into buying expensive but worthless 'security' software.
The commission said the scammers had gulled over a million punters into shelling out for daft products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus.
The FTC persuaded the US District Court for the District of Maryland to issue an order (PDF) granting a temporary injunction against several individuals, Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to shut down the online marketing scheme and freeze the companies' assets to provide for potential future monetary redress to consumers.
According to the FTC, the defendants tricked Internet advertising networks and high traffic websites into displaying their adverts. They falsely represented that they were buying space for legitimate advertisers, but substitued their own scareware ads that lured wibblers onto the defendants' websites.
The scamsters' websites would purport to scan the consumers' PCs for security and privacy vulnerabilities. Those 'scans' would invariably discover numerous problems with the victims' computers and induce them to buy the defendants' 'security' software products at $39.95 or more a whack. However, the 'scans' were completely bogus and the software products were worthless, the FTC alleged.
The individuals named in the FTC's complaint are Daniel Sundin, Sam Jain, Marc D'Souza, Kristy Ross, James Reno, and Maurice D'Souza. The scammers' alleged hosting service and ISP, ByteHosting Internet Services, is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Innovative Marketing, Inc. is incorporated in Belize, with offices in Kiev, Ukraine.
The FTC will also ask the court to permanently bar the defendants from marketing Internet insecurity scareware, force them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains and pay damages to punters caught by the scam. µ
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Due to this specific issue, we have had 6 incidents over the last few months at the company I work for.
Given it takes about 6 hours to diagnose, set up a temporary computer, then reload the original machine and validate it, then put it back into use for the user, it cost us ~$300 per incident.
That's $1800 in estimated lost productivity. Other factors including deadlines and collateral damage aren't included in that number. That's just for us.
Thank God the FTC put an end to this particular scheme. I'd like to see some of that restitution.
Travis
I hate this kind of software and the tricks it pulls to get installed on a pc. But I do computer repair for a living, and part of that is virus removal. We make about $60 a day off of this scamware alone. I've gotten a routine down to clean it out just using a Bart disc. Takes about 2 hours. I feel sorry for the guy above doing all that work. I coulda saved you some money!
The perps who trick the clueless masses into buying worthless software via ads and popups exclaiming "WARNING! Virus detected!" and crap like that don't deserve to be sued. They deserve to be taken out into the woods with a shovel to dig their own graves and then be shot in the back of the heads execution style.
Remember CoolWWWSearch and what a B*&*H that was to get rid of for weeks (months even? I don't recall) even for people who knew what they were doing? That particular one I would have been happy to "take care" of the principals myself and not lose a minutes sleep over it.