FTC to point finger of shame at adware users; Commissioner threatens to out marketers passing content without consent.(News)(Federal Trade Commission)(Jon Leibowitz)

Advertising Age, December, 2005 by Teinowitz, Ira

Byline: IRA TEINOWITZ

A Federal Trade Commission member is serving notice to marketers who use adware to promote their wares: He will push to publicly identify miscreants-effectively shaming them-in future FTC cases unless they voluntarily rein in their activities.

Upset that the same major marketers who have forgone the use of advertising spam continue to support the adware that pops up on consumers computers without permission or control, FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz is calling on marketers to voluntarily clean up their act-or else.

"A lot of consumers have stuff in their computers that's generating pop-up ads that is hard to uninstall that they didn't consent to and some [of the ads] are for major advertisers,'' said Mr. Leibowitz, a...