The Federal Trade Commission brought the hammer down on predatory advertisers who scare users into believing that their system is infected with virus and porn. The peddlers of so-called “scareware” are facing a $163 million fine for  misrepresenting ”expressly or by implication, that they had conducted scans of consumers’ computers and detected security or privacy issues, including viruses, spyware, system errors, and pornography.” Users who surf the internet enough will recognize scareware advertisements as the ones pretending to have found malicious content on their computer and then, conveniently, offer an expensive solution ($30-$100) to fix it.

Scareware crime bosses, Kristy Ross, Sam Jain, Daniel Sundin will jointly share the lion share of the fine, which is nearly triple the amount ($60M) the team took in from 2000 to 2008. The full opinion can be read here [PDF]. The lesson here is don’t be a jerk: the government will, rightly so, bring on the pain.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Clickfree this morning said it has received an investment from Intel Capital that brings its total funding raised to more than $33 million, following an earlier $15 million financing round (PDF) secured back in August 2010.

Clickfree, which is actually a brand name (the company’s called Storage Appliance Corporation), provides a range of computer backup products.

PC and Mac users can simply plug a Clickfree device into their computer’s USB port, and the company says its patented automated backup technology will then take care of the rest (at least for the 400 file type it’s able te recognize).

No need to download or install software, which makes for a pretty compelling offer.

Clickfree is currently available in 35 countries and more than 7,000 retail locations. Aside from the funding from Intel’s venture capital arm, the Intel PC client group and Clickfree are also working on business and technical collaboration to further enhance PC backup capabilities.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch