Adware vendor DirectRevenue has officially shut down. According to a notice posted on its Web site, the company has “ceased operationsâ€? and is maintaining the site only to provide uninstall instructions to legacy users of its adware products. This is good news from a company that engaged in some of the most egregious behaviors in the spyware space — sending “torpedoesâ€? to remove anti-spyware software and showing a pop-up ad every minute, for example.

This will not be the last that we hear from DirectRevenue, however. Although the company settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $1.5 million earlier this year, the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against DirectRevenue and its owners is still pending. As CDT noted when the FTC announced its settlement, $1.5 million is chump change for a company whose owners earned $20 million by deceiving consumers. Thankfully, the state attorneys general have the authority to pursue these kinds of deceptive operations, and the folks in New York have been vigilant about enforcing against the Internet’s nastiest spyware schemes. DirectRevenue may be finished online, but certainly not in court.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 9:32 am and is filed under CDT, Spyware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.