US regulator brings case against pop-up advertiser

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has brought a major case against one of the biggest pop-up advertisers, accusing a California company of extorting computer users by bombarding them with ads then offering a remedy in the form of a $25 (€23.42) to $30 software package.

The company, D-Squared Solutions of San Diego, allegedly took advantage of a loophole in Microsoft Windows' operating system that let the advertisers hijack a system administrative function called Windows Messenger to send alerts to the computer user.

"This is nothing more than a high-tech version of a classic scam," said Mr Howard Beales, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "The defendants created the problem that they proposed to solve - for a fee. Their pop-up spam wasted computer users' time and caused them needless frustration."

According to Mr Daniel R. Salsburg, FTC staff attorney, the advertisements look like regular Windows dialog boxes, and don't feature the flashy graphics and hyperlinks of more typical pop-ups.

D-Squared used Windows Messenger to send the messages to random IP addresses across the Internet, even when users weren't browsing the Web. "As long as you're connected to the Internet, you can get one of these pop-ups," he said.

Besides hawking its own product, the FTC said, D-Squared either sold or licensed its pop-up-sending software to other people, allowing them to engage in the same conduct. The defendant's website allegedly offered software that would allow buyers to send pop-ups to 135,000 Internet addresses per hour, along with a database of more than two billion IP addresses.

The FTC has obtained a temporary restraining order against the company, and said it will seek unspecified "ancillary relief" for consumers. A spokesman for the company declined to comment.

Windows Messenger service, which is different from the instant messaging software from Microsoft and AOL, is automatically turned on in current versions of Windows XP, NT and 2000, although Microsoft plans to disable it. - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service)