COMBATING SPYWARE: OPTA CITED AS EXAMPLE.

Information Society Commissioner Viviane Reding wants to see national regulators follow the example of the Dutch OPTA on combating spyware, spam and adware. OPTA, the national telecommunications watchdog, has just imposed a fine of over 1 million on three companies for illegally installing spyware and adware on more than 22 million computers in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The companies operated together under the name DollarRevenue, which was one of the ten biggest spyware distributors in the world, the European Commission explained. They managed to install the software on personal...