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.