Thread: Microsoft, Wash. State Sue Over 'Scareware'

UPDATED: Those annoying pop-up ads are the target of a flurry of new lawsuits by the state's Attorney General and Microsoft.

UPDATED: Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and the Attorney-General of Washington State, Rob McKenna, are teaming up to crack down on scareware. The term refers to pop-up ads that often show up behind some Web pages and offer to scan users' PCs, find some errors and direct the users to a Website where they can download software to fix the problems found, for a price.

At a joint press conference today in Seattle, McKenna announced that his office filed an anti-scareware suit in King County Superior Court today against two businesses, Branch Software and AlphaRed, and their product, Registry Cleaner XP.

"We will not tolerate scams to trick consumers into buying software to solve problems that don't exist," he added.

InternetNews Realtime IT News - Microsoft, Wash. State Sue Over 'Scareware'

Scareware are those fake antivirus, firewall and antispyware progams that are malware themselves, and try to scare you by making you think your computer is in danger. This way you install them believing they'll solve the "problem", while it's them that start it. Most of the time you even have to pay for them, and some will even forcefully install themselves regardless of your choice (drive-by download).

OK, WGA is a bit of that with the "you may be a victim of software counterfeiting" balloon tips, background downloads and semi-forced installation if you visit Windows Update...