Score One For The Good Guys

After aiming their guns at bloggers receiving under the table payments, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has suspended the majority of a judgment levied against two defendants accused of selling bogus security software to up to a million consumers.

A PC World article reported that James Reno and his Web hosting company, ByteHosting Internet Service of Ohio, will forfeit $116,697, just a fraction of the $1.9 million the judgment levied against Reno and the company. The settlement must still be approved by a court, the FTC said.

The story went on to say the rest of the penalty was suspended due to an inability of the defendants to pay, the agency said. However, if it is found Reno and the company misrepresented their assets, they will have to pay the full amount.

The program the accused party was pitching falsely alerted people of a security problem on their PC. If installed, the program will badger users with warnings until they buy the application, which cost around $40. The FTC complaint also asked hosting providers to prevent people from accessing the Web sites hosting the programs. The FTC asked the court to force the defendants to forfeit money from the scam and compensate consumers.

The decision marks a victory for computer users everywhere. As the technology industry evolved from Comodore 64’s to the do it all Mac Books and PC’s, computer virii, and ways to infect host computers have been keeping pace. Various programs exist and look so similar to normal programs (ByteHosting settled a lawsuit with Symantec in 2004 for allegedly creating pop-up ads that told consumers their Symantec software was about to expire) that only very carefully trained computer eyes could pick up their lack of authenticity.

These scams have provided a legitimate source of income for their proprietors, and have been a thorn in the side of all computer users for a very long time.

This marks the second time the FTC has taken action, and is sending a message to all individuals using the web to make money illegally;

Try it and you will get caught, and then you will pay a large amount of money for getting caught.