The Federal Trade Commission said yesterday that it has asked a U.S. District Court to shut down an operation that installs spyware and adware in consumers' computers, writes DM News. The FTC accused Walter Rines of Stratham, New Hampshire, and his company, Odysseus Marketing, of promising free software that would make peer-to-peer file sharing anonymous - then bundling the otherwise inoperative software with spyware.

Rines told the Associated Press that users were aware of what they were downloading. The FTC filed its first federal anti-spyware case last fall against "Spam King" Sanford Wallace, who was once a partner of Rines's, the FTC said.