I missed seeing this one…

I never see unrequested popups or popunders when I surf, and rarely see ads (Opera’s good to me that way), so this was news to me…

FTC Shuts Down BlogSpot Spyware Ring, and Spyware Operation Shut Down by the FTC.

Hmmm… seems “a massive spyware operation that allegedly used Google Inc.’s BlogSpot service to trick millions of computer users into downloading spyware and adware programs.” _1_ Hmmm, popup ads offered “free lyric files, browser upgrades and ring tones” to sucker naïve users into loading spyware onto their systems.

And a big distro venue for these scum was Blogspot, which “was being used to spread spyware and adware programs such as ‘Search Miracle,’ ‘Miracle Search,’ ‘EM Toolbar,’ ‘EliteBar,’ and ‘Elite Toolbar.’”

Gee, I just cleaned some-a that off a naïve user’s computer the other day. (An older 900Mhz machine barely running XP and dragged to a painful crawl by 371 pieces of spyware and 12 Trojan dialers. *sheesh*)

Nice to know the FTC is doing something useful for a change. I wonder if the creeps who were doing this will get as much time as Martha did for “lying” to investigators? (Remember: the witness whose testimony was critical to Martha’s conviction—NOT for insider trading, which she could not have done, but for “lying”—was later charged with perjury in his testimony… Good going, feds.)

Oh. Well. Regardless, whatever these guys get in punishment/fines won’t be enough. Confiscation of EVERYTHING these guys and their families have now or ever might have down to seven generations might be enough in the way of fines, but boiling in oil wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for these creeps…

*mutter, mutter, gripe, complain*

But the naïve users who infested themselves with spyware and were exposed to potential theft of personal information? Well, God love ‘em, they got what they deserved.