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Office Depot Fined for Rigging PC Malware Scans to Sell Unneeded $300 Tech Support

posted by chromas on Friday March 29 2019, @05:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-knew-Office-Depot-was-still-around? dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Office Depot and a partner company tricked customers into buying unneeded tech support services by offering PC scans that gave fake results, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Consumers paid up to $300 each for unnecessary services.

The FTC yesterday announced that Office Depot and its software supplier, Support.com, have agreed to pay a total of $35 million in settlements with the agency. Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million while Support.com will pay the other $10 million. The FTC said it intends to use the money to provide refunds to wronged consumers.

Between 2009 and 2016, Office Depot and OfficeMax offered computer scans inside their stores using a "PC Health Check" software application created and licensed by Support.com.

"Defendants bilked unsuspecting consumers out of tens of millions of dollars from their use of the PC Health Check program to sell costly diagnostic and repair services," the FTC alleged in a complaint that accuses both companies of violating the FTC Act's prohibition against deceptive practices. As part of the settlements, neither company admitted or denied the FTC's allegations.

The FTC filed its complaint against the companies in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, while at the same time unveiling the settlements with each company.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/office-depot-tricked-people-into-buying-pc-support-with-fake-virus-scans/

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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday March 29 2019, @07:39PM

    by krishnoid (1156) on Friday March 29 2019, @07:39PM (#821990)

    No, no, they don't get to just hand the money back. Instead:

    • All execs are now required to purchase, using clawed-back money, actual antivirus and antimalware software.
    • They must now physically sit down in front of PCs brought in for the cleaning service, and actually scan them, and actually clean them.
    • Another group of execs is required to sit in front of 'cleaned' PCs, rerun scans, generate cryptographically signed reports, and confirm that the PCs are cleaned of all viruses/malware per 3/3 AV/Anti-Malware pieces of software they scan it with.
    • As a bonus, PCs with spinning-rust boot drives are assigned to C-level execs first
    • And then:
    • All antivirus/malware must be paid out of clawback funds and audited to be kept up-to-date every Monday-ish with the latest updates.
    • They continue doing this until all clawed-back bonuses and proportional revenue get used up, or
    • They scan, repair, and verify one PC for every PC they previously 'fixed'.
    • After this, they're eligible for 'parole' and eventual release from this requirement.

    Since they might become suicide risks pretty shortly, lower-level co-conspirators get to take shifts to be on suicide-watch for them. Conjugal and family visits are allowed, as long as the visitors bring in infected PCs.

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