Rich, > The FTC is an incompetent, ineffective, lazy, clueless ship of fools.
Respectfully, this is a sweepingly inaccurate generalization. I don't know how many dealings you've had with the FTC, but we've had a fair amount of interaction with their staff. They are an extremely hard working group of highly intelligent people, with an extraordinary high degree of integrity. With weak financial resources and laws that don't always fit the crime, they have managed to do far more than you may perhaps be familiar with. We've worked with them on these types of anti-spyware actions. And it has been the actions of the FTC (Zango, et al), as well as Windows XP SP2 and class action lawsuits, that put a dead stop to a vast industry of legitimized commercial adware (Direct Revenue, Zango, Claria, WhenU and others). Malware has evolved, but at least it doesn't have venture capitalists behind it anymore. And for that, you can thank, in large part, the FTC. Alex -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rich Kulawiec Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 3:10 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [funsec] FTC files complaint against "Bogus ComputerScan Software" makers <Yawn>. The FTC is an incompetent, ineffective, lazy, clueless ship of fools. It has completely failed to do anything meaningful about spam, spyware, adware, and related forms of abuse. This latest report is merely a feeble attempt at positive PR -- and I'm sure some gullible people will be taken in by it. But the FTC is hardly alone: every other similar agency worldwide has failed as well. The delusional fools who think that law enforcement can or will do something meaningful about online abuse may safely be ignored, as they are completely out of touch with reality. The reality is that no real help is coming, now or in the future. There is no value whatsoever in including these impotent organizations in planning or discussions: we are on our own, as we have always been. And that's not an entirely bad thing: we have now, as we have always had, the collectively ability to deal with problems like this without any outside help. It's our own fault if we have failed to promptly and effectively exercise that ability. ---Rsk _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
