United States of America - At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a U.S. District Court has issued a temporary restraining order halting the sale of keylogger spyware.According to the FTC’s complaint, the Florida-based CyberSpy Software, LLC marketed and sold RemoteSpy keylogger spyware to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers’ computers. The FTC seeks to permanently bar the unfair and deceptive practices and require the defendants to give up their ill-gotten gains.
According to papers filed with the court, the defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email. When consumer victims clicked on the disguised file, the keylogger spyware silently installed in the background without the victims’ knowledge. This spyware recorded every keystroke typed on the victim’s computer (including passwords); captured images of the computer screen; and recorded Web sites visited. To access the information gathered and organized by the spyware, RemoteSpy clients would log into a Web site maintained by the defendants.
Defendants touted RemoteSpy as a “100% undetectable” way to “Spy on Anyone. From Anywhere.” (more)UPDATE (12/3/08 - from a RemoteSpy press release)
RemoteSpy is once again available for sale and users of the popular software can once again access their accounts. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asked the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (case no. 6:08-cv-1872-ORL-31GJK) to issue an injunction to:
(1) stop the sale of RemoteSpy, the best remote computer monitoring tool on the market;
(2) prevent current RemoteSpy customers from using the product;
(3) freeze the assets of the company and its CEO, Tracer Spence; and
(4) prevent CyberSpy and Spence from operating any other business without the FTC's consent.
The Court refused to take such punitive actions, instead simply requiring CyberSpy to do what it had already offered to do: change its promotional materials and advertising practices to make it clear that the software is not designed or intended to be used to monitor any computer without the owner's knowledge and consent. (more)
