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To: Federal Bureau of Investigations, Internet Fraud Unit
From: MicroSmarts, LLC. (Owners of Spyware Begone!)
Anti-Spyware Director: Mr. Bernard Ferguson, After speaking with Agent Bill Farhat on July 29, 2004 at 12:44 PM, I was informed to contact the F.B.I Online Fraud Division to report a massive extortion scheme affecting thousands of online Internet users. This scheme involves an organization known as: CWS (Cool Web Search) They take over consumer’s homepages (technique known as “a browser Hi-Jack”) and then bombard them with Popup advertisements, telling the consumer they are “infected with spyware.” They then force them to click on a “Pay Per Click” advertising link that in turn makes them money through pay per click listings by defrauding major search engines. Also, they prevent the removal of their (proprietary) browser hi-jack thus preventing less technically savvy consumers from being able to do anything on the Internet, including checking their Email. The consumer continues to see CWS search pages & Popups each and every time they try to do anything on the Internet until the hijack can be removed: Go to: http://296f8.ilxt.info/index.php?aid=20009 That is just one of the pages the CWS Browser Hi-jack takes consumers to. Because they display a listing of Anti-Spyware Companies on their search result page, including ours (Spyware Begone), consumers assume that the ANTI-SPYWARE INDUSTRY is CWS and therefore harass legitimate companies like ours, thinking we are causing them their problems! In fact, our software is designed to help rid consumers computers of all infections.
Please investigate CWS by finding out who owns the website listed at:
To learn more about this problem and issue, please read our legal
statement
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at
1-708-283-0830
Sincerely,
Bernard Ferguson, Senior Anti-Spyware Specialist |