• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 15, 2005

Adware company 180solutions was slapped this week with a putative class-action lawsuit that accused the company of "deceptively" distributing its ad-serving software and then preventing users from removing the program.

The complaint, filed in federal court in Illinois, charges computer fraud, trespass, invasion of privacy, and violations of federal wiretap laws, among other allegations.

Sean Sundwall, 180solutions' director of corporate communications, said the company intended to defend itself. "We're just now beginning a thorough review of the complaint, but our initial assessment would be that the case has no merit," he said.

The law firm that brought the case--The Collins Law Firm, P.C., of Naperville, Ill.--filed a similar class-action lawsuit against adware company Direct Revenue earlier this year. In that case, Federal District Court Judge Robert Gettleman handed Direct Revenue a defeat last month, when he ruled that the lawsuit could proceed to trial.

The plaintiff in the 180solutions case, Illinois resident Logan Simios, alleged that the company's software was installed on his computer this year without his consent. He asked the court to allow him to sue on behalf of himself as well as the estimated 20 million U.S. computer users who have had 180solutions' software on their computers since 2002, and "hundreds of thousands" of Illinois computer users who have had the program installed.

The complaint in the lawsuit quotes from a Nov. 26, 2004 Los Angeles Times article about adware and spyware that mentioned 180solutions; that article said a former 180solutions program, nCase, was "notorious in the antispyware community" for "its near impossibility to remove."

180solutions stopped using nCase years ago, Sundwall said. He added that 180solutions doesn't display ads to nCase users, and doesn't pay affiliates to distribute it.

Lately, 180solutions has taken steps to buff its image. Last week, 180solutions introduced a new version of its software that was designed to ensure that consumers consent to the product before it's installed on their computers. 180solutions also sued seven former distributors for allegedly installing the company's software without first obtaining consumers' permission; since January, the company has ended relationships with 500 distributors.