Chalk one up for the good guys. The FTC today announced that it"s filed a restraining order against a company that allegedly offered Internet users a spyware scanner program that falsely reported that computers were infected with spyware, and which failed to remove any spyware at all from infected machines. (We detailed some similarly sketchy businesses in last fall"s story, Poor Defenders.)
"In an effort to induce consumers to purchase and download the defendants" "anti-spyware" software from their Web site, the defendants make numerous material deceptive representations in their marketing media," the FTC report says."
"First, after describing the various dangers of spyware surreptitiously installed on a computer, the defendants represent that they have "scanned" or otherwise examined the consumer"s computer and have detected that spyware already resides on it. In numerous instances, the defendants make these spyware detection claims when the computer has no spyware residing on it."