Ride the Lightning

REMOTE SPY SOFTWARE GIVEN REPRIEVE BY COURT

December 10, 2008

On November 21st, I reported on the temporary restraining order that the Federal Trade Commission had secured against the sale of Remote Spy software. Things have changed since then, and the CEO of CyberSpy software, Tracer Spence, wrote to ask me to update the story. Fair enough.

On November 25th, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida declined to impose an outright ban on the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware, but the court did bar its parent company from marketing the product for deceptive purposes while it considers a complaint from the FTC that the software may violate the FTC Act. The defendants are also barred from providing others with the means to falsely represent a keylogger program as an innocuous file, such a photo or music file.

The court instead issued a more narrowly tailored preliminary injunction. CyberSpy altered its website accordingly and, as of December 3rd, the software was again available for sale and users could access their accounts.

One notable quote from the injuction: "RemoteSpy is designed to be installed without the knowledge or consent of the owner or authorized user of a computer, and defendants' marketing touts this function . . . In light of these marketing efforts, the potential for devastating abuse far outweighs the possibility of benign use."

CyberSpy is seeking to dismiss the entire lawsuit. I don't mind reporting this victory as requested, but it may be a temporary triumph. The makers of spyware skirt the law when they agonizingly come up with language that doesn't openly suggest violation of the law when anyone with the mental capacity of a toad knows that the allure of the product is overwhelmingly to those who wish to use the product to spy illegally on someone else.

The documents in the case may be found at http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0823160/index.shtm

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