D Squared Solutions has agreed to stop smothering computer users with Internet popups promoting (oh, the irony!) ad-blocking software, thus ducking a court fight with federal regulators.
D Squared settled with the Federal Trade Commission July 28, about nine months after the FTC filed suit in federal court in Maryland against the company. The company agreed not to send popup ads using the Messenger function enabled on Windows operating systems, ads that don’t require open Web browsers to show up, but co-founders Anish Dhingra and Jeffrey Davis admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.
However, the settlement calls for D Squared to stop selling ad-blocking software and to stop sending ads unless they’re the kind users can choose not to receive.
D Squared attorneys insisted the company and its founders were not trying to extort or defraud consumers, intending only to send one popup per day to users. One of the lawyers, Anthony Dain, called the ads the “annoyances you have to deal with in a free society.”
The FTC sued D Squared last fall and, in November, got a temporary restraining order against the company and its two founders. “This is nothing more than a high-tech version of a classic scam,” said FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director Howard Beales when the order was handed down. “The defendants created the problem that they proposed to solve – for a fee. Their pop-up spam wasted computer users’ time and caused them needless frustration.”
The D Squared popups exploited a little-used Windows Messenger Server tool and mostly advertised popup-blocking software at $25 to $30, marketed from as many as 25 Websites, and turning up as often as every ten seconds at some extreme. The FTC also said the popups could hit computer screens even when the users were not on the Internet.
D Squared had been on the anti-popup rader before the FTC cracked down on the ad-blocking popup ads. Dhingra had also been named as the operator of a D Squared project known as BroadcastMarketer.com, selling popup spam tools, which got them into hot water with America Online, after AOL, according to a published report, was forced to make technical changes to block networks from popup spam. Dhingra reportedly threatened in turn to create a new version that would make a “workaround” for AOL.
