FTC Smacks Zango with Civil Judgment

Paul Young "Digging a little Deeper" inspired my original post on Zango. Having had my now (Mac Techie) daughter download Kazaa a few years back - I "ran away" (fast) whenever I spotted Zango while surfing.

Now the FTC has responded (undoubtedly to massive complaints) and smacked Zango with a civil judgment.

From the FTC news release:

Zango, Inc., formerly known as 180solutions, Inc., one of the world's largest distributors of adware, and two principals have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they used unfair and deceptive methods to download adware and obstruct consumers from removing it, in violation of federal law. The settlement bars future downloads of Zango's adware without consumers' consent, requires Zango to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware, and requires them to give up $3 million in ill-gotten gains.

"Consumers' computers belong to them, and they shouldn't have to accept any content they don't want," said Lydia Parnes, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. "If consumers choose to receive pop-up ads, so be it. But it violates federal law to secretly install software that forces consumers to get pop-ups that disrupt their computer use."

FTC release, here.

To complain about issues like this to the FTC, link here.