FTC: More spyware fighting tools needed
Organizations and law enforcement agencies fighting spyware are making progress, but new tools in an antispyware bill stalled in the U.S. Congress could improve the efforts, a member of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said Monday. One of the spyware bills passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year, the Spy Act, would give the FTC authority to impose civil fines on companies that distribute spyware to consumers’ computers. The bill, along with the Internet Spyware Prevention (or I-SPY) Act, have stalled in the Senate since passing the House in May and June.
The FTC has the authority to collect profits from spyware operations and collect money for consumer redress, but it lacks the authority to impose other fines, as it does when going after spammers, said Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, speaking at a spyware forum in Washington, D.C.
Assigning a dollar figure to consumer harm is tricky in many spyware cases, especially when the spyware delivers pop-up advertisements to computers, Leibowitz said. It’s sometimes difficult to get courts to assign large consumer damages to pop-up cases, he said. FTC: More spyware-fighting tools needed | InfoWorld | News | 2007-10-29 | By Grant Gross, IDG News Service