FTC Settles Advertising.com Adware Charges

By Geoff Duncan August 4, 2005

The Federal Trade Commission has agreed to a settlement with Advertising.com, also known as Teknosurf.com, over the installation and behavior of its SpyBlast software. SpyBlast purported to be a free anti-spyware program, but using SpyBlast also installed separate software which tracked users online activity, and generated pop-up ads. The FTC alleged Advertising.com didn’t provide users with sufficient notice that SpyBlast came bundled with an adware program.

The terms of the settlement require that Advertising.com “clearly and prominently” disclose adware bundled with other software; further, Advertising.com must comply with record-keeping provisions and other requirements to monitor the company’s compliance with the FTC’s order. Advertising.com did not admit or deny guilt as part of the settlement.

Advertising.com was purchased by America Online, a division of Time Warner, Inc., in June 2004 for $435 million. However, the activity covered by the FTC settlement occurred during 2003, before AOL’s purchase of the company, and AOL is not bound by the terms of the FTC settlement. Advertising.com says it has not distributed adware products since 2003, and has no plans to do so in the future.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Best Dell laptop deals: Cheap laptops starting at $280

The Dell XPS 13 9315 on a table against a window.

Being one of the best laptop brands on the market, it's no surprise that Dell has a huge selection of laptops that you can potentially pick from. Whether you're going for gaming laptops or just normal day-to-day laptops, there's probably a great option for you. In fact, there are even some great budget laptops for those who don't really need anything fancy and just want something basic to get online and access shows or work-related content.
Of course, having so many options can be a bit overwhelming for somebody who isn't familiar with Dell or the laptop market, which is why we scoured the Dell website and other retailers for our favorite picks and listed them below. This list has a lot of crossover with the best Dell XPS deals, student laptop deals and gaming laptop deals, so make sure to check out some of those other great laptop deals as well.

Dell Inspiron 15 -- $280, was $330

Computing

No, an old iPhone won’t beat the Snapdragon X Elite

A photo of a laptop with the Snapdragon X Plus CPU.

Update 6/14/24: A slate of new Geekbench 6 results show that the Snapdragon X Elite performs about as well as Qualcomm claimed, at least in the Galaxy Book4 Edge. The new results, which were uploaded last night and this morning, show the processor reaching the advertised 4GHz and hitting single-core speeds that aligned with Qualcomm's claims. Multi-core speeds are still a bit below where expected, but not by much.

Although these new results show that there's a little more to the story than the peak performance of Qualcomm's new chips, it's important to wait for proper reviews to vet the performance of these processors. At the moment, it appears the software isn't final, so it's hard to draw any firm conclusions about performance before the processors release on June 18.

Computing

Samsung’s MacBook alternative is up to $700 off today

The Samsung Galaxy Book 4 Pro against a textured grey backdrop.

If you like the idea of the MacBook Air but don't own any other Apple products or don't want to be in the Apple ecosystem, then we're happy to inform you that there are some great alternatives. One example is the Galaxy Book4, which is equally thin and light and can still pack a punch when it comes to processing power. Even better, you can get it for much cheaper than the usual $900 since you get a direct $200 discount that brings it down to $700, plus you can get up to $508 of trade-in credit. So, you could potentially get it for as low as $192, assuming you get the best trade-in value.

Why you should buy the Galaxy Book4
At just 0.61-inch of thickness, the Galaxy Book4 comes pretty close to the thin size of the MacBook Air, so it's a very portable device, which is impressive since it comes with a larger 15.6-inch screen. Granted, the screen runs at an FHD resolution, which is a bit lower than the MacBook Air, but at that screen size, the difference isn't that big. Luckily, the keyboard is great to type on, and you can expect up to 15 hours of battery life, which is pretty good too.