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Lawsuit against Zone Labs dropped

By Derek Sooman

On February 1, 2006, 7:03 PM

180Solutions has willingly dismissed its suit against Zone Labs, makers of the popular Zone Alarm firewall software. 180Solutions filed the lawsuit last November against the internet security company, seeking to force Zone Labs to alter the way its ZoneAlarm software labeled technologies utilized by the Zango and 180Search Assistant programs.

No changes were made to ZoneAlarm's software, its log ranking of the Global Windows Hook or the OSFirewall alert language as a result of the suit or specifically with regards to 180Solutions software.

"From the inception of the suit, we believed it had no merit," said John Slavitt, general counsel for Check Point Software Technologies, parent company of Zone Labs.

"ZoneAlarm alerts are triggered by the behavior of a program, not its name. If the 180Solutions software exhibits suspicious behavior, we alert our customers accordingly. We did not make any concessions or reach a settlement after the suit was filed."

180Solutions did not offer any reason for dismissing the suit.

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User Comments: 7

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  1. 180Solutions, Their stuff REEKS of spyware. Nobody was ever fooled by them. Its time to turn the tables on spyware writers and educate them of the error of their ways.
  2. This story sounds a little more inflated than it should be. So there are a few pop-ups everu once in a while from a certain program. It MUST be that Zone Alarm is out to bully on 180Solutions! Yeah right! Stop being so conceited. The problem is not Zone LAbs programming, it's 180Solutions and they were right to drop the lawsuit. The would have been annihilated in court.
  3. 180Solutions actually infected many computers in the company where I worked, and the users of those computers don't even know how it penetrated their systems. Clearly 180Solutions uses sneaky way to enter themselves to people's computers, and that alone justify it to be called spyware.They knew that if they continue with their suit, which they will surely lose, they will be officially labeled as a spyware company, and many people will start to notice them and cry foul.
  4. Most Anti-Spyware programs scan for Zango and 180Solutions related stuff anyway, so Check Point's claim of 'no merit' is spot on.I've also been a Zone Alarm Pro user for years, so this is definitely a 'feel-good' story!
  5. [quote] 180Solutions, Their stuff REEKS of spyware. [/quote]Nio kidding. that has definently been one of the deciding factors when i decide to install something. If the program "needs" 180solutions, then i usually fix it with one *delete.And why are they complaining to zone alarms....hmmm.... maybe because they have the most money... Because really, any good spyware sweeper, virus scanner, or firewall will show zone alarm as spyware, or at least, as suspicious.Who knows, mabye part of the reason 180solutions dropped the charges was that they knew their software would be proved to contain some rather malicious code, and they just didn't want that going on national news.
  6. 180Solutions even sounds like spam. Message or subject in the email that begins with several numbers should raise a red flag. I am glad they 180 decided to dropped the suit but how much did this cost Zone Alarm and it lawyers? Or perhaps ZA threaten 180?
  7. It's mind-boggling that 180Solutions would even consider filing a lawsuit against any anti-spyware firm. When it came out that they do, indeed, infect computers, doesn't it follow that they, in turn, would be open to lawsuits from the owners of those systems? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

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