Press release from the New York State Attorney General’s Office.
NEW YORK, NY (January 29, 2007)—Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today announced that New York has reached ground-breaking settlements with three major online advertisers for promoting products and services on the Internet through deceptively installed programs known as “adware.” The agreements, with Priceline.com Incorporated (“Priceline”), Travelocity.com LP (“Travelocity”) and Cingular Wireless LLC (“Cingular”) mark the first time law enforcement has held advertisers responsible for ads displayed through adware.
The settlements grew out of the Internet Bureau’s investigation of DirectRevenue. People of the State of New York v. Direct Revenue, LLC.
Priceline, Travelocity and Cingular, among others, were discovered to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars delivering ads through Direct Revenue software. Not a surprise, many legitimate companies fund the proliferation of adware with their advertising dollars, despite anti-spyware activists.
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