Good news for the naive Luddites that each and every one of us has in our families. You know, the ones who believe that Internet Explorer pop-ups with Windows-like dialogue buttons are actual OS warnings and start naively clicking their way to a system infected with the spyware these scams are claiming to prevent. Because the FTC has finally nailed some of these companies and made them pay out over $2 million in ill-gotten gains.

You can read the article for the details on the settlement, but we found this bit about a program called Spykiller a lot more sleazy, and therefore, interesting. From ConsumerAffairs.com:

While the SpyKiller “scan” was running, the program displayed a status report entitled “Spyware Found on your PC:” that included a category called “Live Spyware Processes.” In fact, the FTC alleges, this category deceptively identified anti-virus programs, word processing programs, and other legitimate processes running on the system as spyware. Then, even though the “scan” itself was free, consumers usually had to pay approximately $39.95 to enable SpyKiller’s “removal” capabilities.

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