US regulators said on Monday they had settled charges against a supplier of computer pop-up ads that had used a little-known Windows feature to bombard users with unwanted ads.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it had reached a settlement with San Diego-based D Squared Solutions that bars the company from sending pop-up ads via Windows Messenger Service.
Windows Messenger allows computer network administrators to communicate with others on their networks but is unnecessary for home users. It is unrelated to popular instant-messaging software such as AOL Instant Messenger.
The messenger service pop-up ads from San Diego-based D Squared were used to sell pop-up blocking software, and they could appear even when a user was online but not browsing the Web, according to the FTC.
The settlement contains no financial penalties against D Squared, and the company admitted no wrongdoing. Representatives of the company could not be reached for comment.
As part of the agreement, D Squared is also barred from selling messenger service pop-up blocking software or selling messenger service pop-up sending software and from sending instant messaging pop-up ads, the FTC said.
The FTC said the pop-up ads appeared as frequently as every 10 minutes in the forefront of screens, causing consumers to lose data and work productivity, applications to freeze and some computers to crash.
The FTC charged that the practices were unfair and violated the US consumer protection law. In November, a federal judge temporarily halted D Squared`s pop-up advertising at the request of the agency.
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