regulator filed suit in late September, complaining that the
stealthy downloads violate federal law and asking the US District
Court for the District of New Hampshire to order a permanent halt
to them.
According to the complaint, New Hampshire-based Odysseus
Marketing and its principal, Walter Rines, advertised software they
claimed would allow consumers to engage in peer-to-peer
file-sharing anonymously. The claims, says the agency, are false,
not only because the software does not make file-sharing anonymous,
but because it is not strictly free.
Instead, says the FTC, the software is bundled with spyware
called Clientman that secretly downloads dozens of other software
programs, degrading consumers’ computer performance and memory.
Among other things, this accumulated software can replace or
reformat search engine results, alleges the watchdog. It gives the
example of consumers who downloaded the spyware trying to conduct a
Google or Yahoo! search. Their screens could reveal a page that
appears to be the Google or Yahoo! search engine result, but is
actually a copy-cat site with the order of the search results
rigged to place the defendants’ clients first, says the FTC.
The bundled software programs also generate pop-up ads and
capture and transmit information from the consumers’ computers to
servers controlled by the defendants, according to the
complaint.
The FTC charges that Rines and Odysseus Marketing have an
obligation to disclose that their “free” software download causes
spyware and adware to be installed on consumers’ computers. But
instead, the FTC alleges, they hide their disclosure in the middle
of a two-page end-user licensing agreement buried in the “Terms and
Conditions” section of their website.
In addition, the FTC alleges that the defendants deliberately
make their software difficult to detect and impossible to remove
using standard software utilities. Although the defendants purport
to offer their own “uninstall” tool, it does not work. In fact, it
installs additional software, according to the FTC’s complaint.
