Adware Company Sues Over Anti-Spyware Law

from the doesn't-that-seem-like-'fessing-up? dept

WhenU, one of the more well known adware companies has filed a lawsuit to block Utah's anti-spamware law, claiming that it restricts their constitutional rights to advertise. While a lot of companies have been fighting against the bill, a number of careful reads through the law have pointed out that it actually seems to do a pretty good job of defining spyware. It basically prevents software from sending info home without making this fact clear to the end user or providing them with an easy way to uninstall the software. In fighting the law, most companies have been fairly vague in explaining just what legitimate software would be made illegal. The main issue is really just the notion of informing users that their data will be sent somewhere - and it's tough to come up with a good reason why the users shouldn't be informed. As far as I can tell, those fighting against the law are basically admitting that they want to secretly record your info and send it off somewhere.
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  • identicon
    Oliver Wendell Jones, 13 Apr 2004 @ 11:52am

    Speaking of spy/spam/adware...

    Anybody know how to get rid of Twain-Tech adware?

    I've done a Google search and the pages I found listed steps that didn't apply to my situation.

    I came home night before last and noticed that when I closed my browser a pop-up window would appear and minimize itself to the task bar, and I couldn't get it to restore to normal size to even see what the ad was for. I could right-click the task and close it.

    A quick run of HijackThis found twaintec.dll installed as a Browser Helper Object and I removed it and deleted all files matching twaintec*.* from my system.

    I rebooted and its back from the dead. Spybot does not pick it up on a scan and I'm hoping to avoid re-formatting my system and starting from scratch...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 13 Apr 2004 @ 12:51pm

      Re: Speaking of spy/spam/adware...

      Ad aware?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        AMetamorphosis, 13 Apr 2004 @ 1:56pm

        Re: Speaking of spy/spam/adware...


        Oliver,

        Try AdAware ....
        Also, I had a similar experience with another piece of ( I loosely call it ) " software " that kept coming back from the dead.
        My brother who is a net admin found out that the program was actually reconnecting to a server and repeatedly reinstalling itself under different names each time ! The file that was causing it to reconnect was a .dll file and it took us two hours to find this out and finally get rid of it.

        Best of luck & thanks for the heads up on this !

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Julian, 15 May 2004 @ 8:10pm

      Re: Speaking of spy/spam/adware...

      I found these websites helpful:
      http://computercops.biz/print-1-35261.html
      and
      www.twain-tech.com

      We've managed to delete twaintec but now we've got another adware/trojan/virus.

      I believe that any company who advertises their products/services using an adware/trojan/virus should be black-banned! Please join in the campaign starting with ebay and presciptions-r-us!!

      Anyway, goodluck!
      Julian

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      ali, 4 Jun 2004 @ 9:08am

      Re: Speaking of spy/spam/adware...

      Download SpyHunter 1.1.29 or higher. Run it across the entire machine. It will show all registry hacks, dll and exe files for this parasite. Pay them their 40 dollars to release the cleanup mode, or do so by hand if you are a registry guru. Disconnect from the network while you do this or it will reinfect over the net. It is a bugger this one is. Good luck.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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