AOL Settles Adware Charges
from the another-one dept
Earlier this year, AOL said that Advertising.com, a subsidiary they bought last year, would no longer advertise on adware offerings. That made sense, given the backlash against adware. However, what they didn't make clear was that Advertising.com had apparently distributed their own adware in the past as well. The FTC certainly knew about it and filed charges against the company for its practice of not clearly letting people know they were getting adware when they signed up to get a "free" piece of security software, of all things called "SpyBlast." So, basically, this piece of anti-spyware installed adware at the same time. Advertising.com says they only offered it for a short period of time before stopping, so they had no problem agreeing to a settlement with the FTC promising they won't do it again.
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