Spitzer goes after Direct Revenue

In April, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit against spyware vendor Direct Revenue, based in New York City. There is an excellent article about Direct Revenue in Business Week: The Plot To Hijack Your Computer.

According to the article, Direct Revenue has installed their spyware/adware into nearly 100 million computers.

Direct Revenue's customers include Delta Airlines, Yahoo, Vonage, JPMorgan Chase, and Cingular.

McAfee estimates that nearly 75% of all sites listed in response to queries such as "free screen savers" or "digital music" will attempt to install spyware on your system.

The article goes into great detail about the techniques used by Direct Revenue's programmers to make it impossible for the owner of the computer to remove the unwanted software. Seriously, how do these programmers sleep at night?

According to the Business Week article, Direct Revenue's philosophy was heavily shaped by penis pill spammer Jesse Stein.

Direct Revenue's defense boils down to 'Hey, everybody else does it.'

I last wrote about Direct Revenue in April.