The Federal Trade Commission today told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that the power to invoke civil penalties on spyware distributors would aid in deterrence.

Eileen Harrington, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said enforcement options, such as seeking consumer redress or making the operators give up their ill-gotten gains, are not always sufficient. Many times, customers do not lose money, or it is difficult to quantify how much they did lose, she said.

Civil penalties would be a more effective deterrent, Harrington said.

Spyware and harmful adware are a critical threat to online security and privacy. It is wrong, and it must be stopped, Katherine McGuire, vice president for government relations at the nonprofit Business Software Alliance, told SCMagazineUS.com on Friday.

“While legislation is needed to fight privacy threats and to increase online safety, any new legislation should target bad behavior, and not attempt to dictate ‘good’ or ‘bad’ technology,” she said.

At a minimum, the use of spyware to steal personal information should be deemed a crime, said Tiffany Jones, director, government relations, at Symantec.

“As it stands right now, nowhere in the Federal Register is the word ‘spyware’ mentioned, nor the use of it to steal information,” she told SCMagazineUS.com. “So the most important thing is to make it a crime, first, and then develop penalties for committing that crime.”

source: networkworld.com/community/node/28716

A federal appeals court has ruled that MySpace.com is immune from a lawsuit over the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl by a man she met on the social networking Web site.

The Texas girl’s family had sued MySpace and its parent company, News Corp., claiming that MySpace didn’t protect young users from sexual predators.

Girl’s family claim MySpace didn’t protect young users from sexual predators. The girl was 14 when a 19-year-old man she met on MySpace allegedly sexually assaulted her in a Travis County parking lot in May 2006.

Court notes girl circumvented Web site’s safety features by lying about her age. The girl was 13 but misrepresented herself as 18 years old when she created a MySpace profile in 2005.

MySpace applauded court’s ruling, saying it takes safety of users very seriously.