FTC Shuts Down Pop-Up Extortion Firm

An anonymous reader writes "The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that's been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed."

I wonder what their email addresses are...

[delirium28]

Maybe we can get them to shut down the spammers next...

2 billion.. hmmm

[nyet]

"On its Web site, the firm said the software could beam 135,000 pop-up ads at consumers every hour, and claimed to have a database of over two billion Internet addresses, according to the FTC."

2^32, minus subnets and netmasks, minus 10, 127, 192.168, etc...

Okay...

[Saint Aardvark]

"But the firm now says Windows Messenger probably isn't necessary for home users, and future versions of its Windows software will come with the service turned off."

I gotta know. Who ported cluestick to Windows? :-)

Re:one of their own commissioners...

[tomhudson]

Yep, so much for government of the people, by the people, for the people. It's only when their self-interest gets nicked that they move their lardarses. Lets hope some of them lose money on $CO..

How long before linux is affected?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has come to my attention that there is a is a program called "kdialog" on most distros (since KDE is the dominant gui), since there are a lot of incecure boxen out there, how long will it take before some one writes a program to exploit this.

If you think I'm lying, press ALT+F2, then paste the following into it.

kdialog --msgbox "Your computer is broadcasting a IP Address, please go to purplemonkeyse.cx to download a security fix for only \$129"

To see if you computer is vulnerable, press ALT+PRINT SCREEN+B at the same time.

Re:These are annoying

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, instead of clicking on you non-working link to install a pile of shit annoyance on your already resource-choked Windows machine, how about just disabling the Windows Messenger service?

You don't have precious seconds to waste by clicking the preview button, but you're reading Slashdot?

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[kfg]

. . .ride my bike outside without having to endure constant sales pitches, without having huge logos and brand names all over the place.

Actually, this is a pretty good description of the appearance of most of the bike riders I see these days.

KFG

Re:Thats what we get for tolerating advertisements

[jazman_777]

What exactly is the difference?

Billboards are not a violation of anyone's property rights. They may be an aesthetic offense, but that is what life in the USA is all about these days, is it not? Looking like a slob is one of our fundamental rights.

My Favorite part...

[ePhil_One]

On its Web site, the firm said the software could beam 135,000 pop-up ads at consumers every hour, and claimed to have a database of over two billion Internet addresses, according to the FTC

If any wants, I can sell them a copy of that database for just $25,000. A brief sample to show I have the goods:

192.168.0.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0.4

Well, I have a list with over 4.2 Billion!

[ahecht]

Some claim to have a list with 4,228,250,625 IP addresses, but 16,581,375 of those seem to all refer to the same computer. I, however, have a verified list of 4,211,669,251.

Re:one of their own commissioners...

[tomhudson]

Poster wrote:

How do you do counterfeiting "in a small way"?

Counterfeit pennies?

Re:Actually it's a windows thing

[GigsVT]

Admitting to using not only Windows, but also AOL on Slashdot. Using them at home even. Ouch.

You know, you could have turned off the messenger service in the services control panel, even if AOL hadn't already.

Re:My Favorite part...

[(H)elix1]

If any wants, I can sell them a copy of that database for just $25,000. A brief sample to show I have the goods:

192.168.0.1
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0 .4

{Dark Helmet voice}
192.168.0.1-2-3-4-5 -- what a coincidence, I have that combination on my network.
{/Dark Helmet voice}