SEATTLE, WA — In cyberspace, nobody wants to hear you snivel – especially if you’re a spyware manufacturer. American courtrooms, on the other hand, provide the perfect venue for even the most bizarre of legal battles. One currently in development features PC Tools’ Spyware Doctor and the allegedly bug-spreading Zango.As Zango, which considers itself to be an “online media company,” sees it, the anti-spyware software unfairly lumps its technology in with bad nasties with which it has nothing in common.
The problem, of course, is that Zango makes adware, precisely the kind of thing that Spyware Doctor is made to remove.
Most famous for redirecting traffic from adult affiliates and spreading the first MySpace worm, Zango believes that PC Tools should cough up $35 million in damages for not warning users that it is blocking the company’s applications from delving deep into their user’s hard drives without permission. So confident of its right to compensation is the company that it filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court last Tuesday.
“We believe the proceedings are an attempt by Zango to influence our reclassification process,” PC Tools explained in an email statement to IDG last Thursday. “Prior to the lawsuit we were well into an in-depth review and reclassification of the latest versions of Zango products. We advised Zango of this imminent re-rating and we believe they have chosen to lodge these proceedings as a way to gain media attention of the review.”
Known as 180solutions previously, the company has adopted a new name and is attempting to assign a new face to its product, insisting that it does not deserve the “elevated” threat-level rating in spite of its recent $3 million settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. During November, the company was found to have installed software deceptively onto PCs that forced infected system owners to deal with unwanted pop-up ads, while their surfing habits were tracked removal of the offending software was made difficult.
