Windows Messenger Spammers Call It Quits

[Scarecrow Man]

Spammer outfit D Squared Solutions has agreed to stop sending spam over Windows Messenger to avoid a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Last year, the company began a campaign of sending spam to Windows PC users by exploiting the Windows Messenger Service. Windows Messenger is a background service that allows networked computers to send messages to each other. Unfortunately, spammers discovered how to send spam to thousands of XP computers over the internet and it started an epidemic of messenger spam.

Learn How to Disable Windows Messenger Spam

One of the spams sent by D Squared popped up on the desktop of an FTC official. The advertisement was for a product to stop the very advertisement being used to promote it. The FTC official decided that this was extortion and filed suit against the company.

D Squared now has agreed to stop using the Messenger service to send advertisements, to stop selling messenger blocker programs and is barred from sending advertisements which consumers cannot opt out of.

Good riddance.

[-pops-]

Were they the only ones doing it?

Bit doubtful of that.

[Scarecrow Man]

Hmmm. Good point.

Friday, July 30, 2004; 12:58 PM

A company that bombarded computer users with Internet "pop up" ads in hopes they would buy the company's ad-blocking software has agreed to quit the practice, avoiding a court battle with the Federal Trade Commission.

D Squared Solutions LLC, a San Diego company created by two college students, reached a settlement with the FTC Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Maryland. The FTC had filed a civil suit against the company last year.

Under terms of the agreement, D Squared will no longer send pop up ads using the Windows Messenger Service or sell software that blocks such ads. It is also barred from sending any ads through the Internet that don't allow computer users to choose not to receive them.

D Squared will have to let the FTC monitor its business for the next five years and report regularly on its activities. The company's founders, Anish Dhingra and Jeffrey Davis, do not admit wrongdoing and do not face any penalties.

The agreement said Davis and Dhingra settled to avoid "the costs and uncertainties of litigation."

The FTC's legal case against D Squared, one of the first to address pop up ads that have become a common Internet marketing technique, was seen as an attempt to limit an often intrusive form of advertising that exploits technology built into Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software.

The government alleged that using Windows Messenger, D Squared was able to send pop up ads every ten seconds to computer users. The ads came in small dialogue boxes that usually appeared in the middle of the computer screen.

The ads pitched software sold by D Squared for between $25 and $30 that could block pop ups. Windows Messenger can be disabled by a user, but most who received the D Squared ads didn't know how to do it and were forced to shut down their Internet connection to avoid the barrage.

D Squared allegedly tried to sell its technique to other people, claiming it could send pop-ups to as many as 135,000 Internet addresses each hour and had a database of 2 billion addresses.

The FTC said the practice was unfair because it caused hassles to consumers and misled them into thinking there was nothing they could do to stop the ads.

Attorneys for Dhingra and Davis claimed the pair were not trying to extort consumers with their ads and only intended to send one a day to computer users. Lawyer Anthony J. Dain has said the ads are "annoyances you have to deal with in a free society."

D Squared won a small victory in December when U.S. District Judge Andre Davis ruled it could continue sending ads until the case was resolved.

Calls to Dain and the FTC were not immediately returned Friday.

Source