Spyware Company DirectRevenue Shuts Down Operations

New York Company DirectRevenue LLC, the maker of infamous adware, has eventually closed shop. Since its inception in 2002, the company was a reason for undeserving unhappiness to people over the brief period it stayed. The company installed its software without either informing or taking the permission of the users and displayed a series of 'difficult to remove' undesirable pop-up ads on the victims' computers.

DirectRevenue, which made millions of dollars by sending ads onto hijacked computes, closed down in the fourth week of October 2007. This has happened after the FTC passed its final judgment against the firm and fined it $1.5 Million in June 2007.

It was in 2004 that the case against the company started when the New York court instructed DirectRevenue to halt installing spyware on people's computers unless it got their consent.

In April 2007, Eliot Spitzer, the New York Attorney General, accused DirectRevenue LLC of selling software that slyly planted a huge number of pop-up ads on people's computers. In his lawsuit, Spitzer requested the court to prohibit the company from loading spyware or distributing ads any further, and to set a monetary penalty against it in restitution to damages. InfoWorld published this in news in April 2007.

According to Spitzer, these problems were counterfeit and unfair for consumers, harmful for organizations that require efficient networks for completing their tasks, and also harmful for Internet retailers who seek consumers' trust and their comfort in conducting online trading.

Another critic of DirectRevenue, also an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, Ben Edelman, said that such a business should have never come into being. ComputerWorld published this in news on October 24, 2007. The company never performed any useful activity for computer users, rather it preyed on their vulnerable machines, Edelman commented.

With the exposition of activities of DirectRevenue and those of other firms specializing in adware and spyware, security researchers gathered sufficient data that estimated an almost $3 revenue per annum for such firms by infecting one consumer with their malicious software.

DirectRevenue has posted a message on its Website announcing that it, with other subsidiary firms, has stopped their operations.

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» SPAMfighter News - 11/15/2007