Advertising.com agrees to end adware bundle with anti-spyware program

Internet Business News, August 4, 2005

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The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revealed that Advertising.com, an America Online Inc (AOL) subsidiary, will not be able to bundle its anti-spyware program with software that tracks the online behaviour of consumers.

The SpyBlast program was promoted by Advertising.com (also known as Teknosurf.com) as offering protection against hackers to users' computers. However according to the FTC, when the program was downloaded another program that monitored the online behaviour of users was installed. In addition the FTC said the program enabled pop-up ads and claimed that Advertising.com did not give adequate notice to users that the adware program was bundled with SpyBlast.

It is understood that regular FTC checks have been agreed upon by Advertising.com to settle a suit filed by the agency for deceptive advertising. Under the settlement, guilt was reportedly not admitted or denied by Advertising.com, which AOL said had only been in the adware business during 2003 for a short period of time.

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