The FTC alleged Trustsoft aggressively and deceptively marketed its SpyKiller application using the Web sites of affiliates, banner and pop-up ads and spam in order to capitalize on legitimate consumer concerns about spyware and induce consumers to download the anti-spyware product.
According to the FTC's complaint filed with the district court, Trustsoft sent pop-up and e-mail messages informing consumers that their computers had been remotely "scanned" and that spyware had been "detected" even though defendants had not performed any such scans. And the company's marketing materials urged consumers to access the SpyKiller Web site to get a "free scan" for spyware.
While the SpyKiller "scan" was running, the program displayed a status report entitled "Spyware Found on your PC:" that included a category called "Live Spyware Processes." According to the FTC's complaint, the software deceptively identified anti-virus programs, word processing programs, or any of the processes running on the system as spyware.
Then, even though the "scan" itself was free, consumers had to pay roughly $39.95 to remove the programs falsely labeled as spyware. Defendants promised in their marketing materials that SpyKiller would find and remove "all" spyware, including "all traces" of particular spyware on consumers' computers. However, the complaint alleges the software failed to remove significant amounts of spyware, including specified spyware defendants claimed on their Web site to remove. The agency alleges that the deceptive claims violate the FTC Act.
In addition, the filing said the company sent spam promoting the SpyKiller software which contained similar deceptive claims, failed to identify themselves as advertising, used false "from" lines, gave no valid postal addresses, and failed to provide consumers with notice of and the ability to "opt-out," in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.
