Microsoft assisted the FTC investigation and is demanding compensation from the defendants ERG Ventures LLC since the latter's products violate the Washington Computer Spyware Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

The Federal trade commission has already shut down ERG Venture LLC, who are the operators of the malicious media motor that installed onto victims systems apparently benign programs that in turn downloaded malicious code, spy ware, ad ware and pornographic pop-ups.

The American software giant has announced that it is joining FTC in debuting legal action against people involved in the media motor distributed by ERG Ventures LLC. Timothy P. Taylor, an affiliate of ERG Ventures is one of the main targets. It is alleged that he and others have violated the Washington Computer Spyware Act and the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

The restraining order against ERG Venture have forced it shut its operations down. The FTC reports that the operations mainly involved in distribution of spy ware under the guise of screensavers and other social engineering methods. After the download of media motor there were porno pop-up windows that sapped computing resources. The screen savers featured images of prominent stars and came along with a software piggybacked to establish connections with external computers that downloaded various additional programs in the background and then started the bombarding pop-ups that sapped system resources.

The user's internet activity was spied upon and even Windows Registry settings were rewritten also Internet Explorer was redirected to undesired sites. The FTC complaint names ERG Ventures, LLC and its business partners, Media Motor, Joysticksavers.com, and PrivateinPublic.com. Part of it was Elliott S. Cameron, Robert A. Davidson, II, and Gary E. Hill, as well as Timothy P. Taylor d/b/a Team Taylor Made.

Microsoft has stated that they have a responsibility to help protect their customers and to do whatever they can to prevent this kind of practice. They commend the FTC for exposing this spy ware operation and were proud to be of technical assistance to them.

Scott Stein, senior attorney with the Internet Safety Enforcement Team at Microsoft was also happy that they were a part of the operation targeted by the FTC that involved legal action in a part of the operation where the defendants were packaging a broad array of unwanted and intrusive programs that were seemingly innocent programs.

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