(David Finn, COO)
Last month Jaimee King (AppEsteem’s General Counsel) and I traveled from Washington State to Washington, D.C. to meet with law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and Capitol Hill staffers. Our agenda: to collaborate on new ways to protect consumers from the deceptive and harmful apps that plague the software downloading industry.
We met with eight of the top cyber officials in the FBI and Department of Justice; more than a dozen division heads, attorneys, and investigators at the FTC; and staffers at the Senate Majority Committee on Aging.
Our primary message was simple – through collaboration, the private sector and government can make tremendous strides in protecting consumers. This message rides on the 2005 industry workshop and report from the FTC that discussed malware, spyware and adware. The FTC made a series of recommendations in that report, including that
- “The public and private sectors should work separately and in concert” to reduce the harm this fraudulent software causes;
- Industry should develop common standards to help the industry self-regulate and better protect consumers; and
- Industry should refer cases to the government for civil and criminal prosecution.
Unfortunately, the private sector didn’t get it together right away – leaving the problem of fraud and malware from harmful apps to reach epidemic proportions over the next decade. As the industry failed to control itself, the race to the bottom in making and distributing deceptive apps intensified. And the losers turned out to be millions and millions of consumers.
But that’s now changing. As we discussed with our government hosts in D.C., stakeholders across the private sector proudly came together last year to finally do what the FTC recommended: collaborating to develop the most comprehensive, clean software standards ever, which are now publicly available under Creative Commons.
And with the launch of the AppEsteem Deceptor Program, AppEsteem is working with the security industry to call out the worst apps that trick and defraud people. We hope – and expect – that most Deceptors will clean up their act and stop harming consumers once we’ve named them.
As for those who persist in preying on consumers, these Deceptors will be among the most appropriate targets for prosecution. Our meetings in D.C. were a big step in adding accountability for the makers and distributors of dirty apps.
Everybody we met in D.C. was engaged and responsive – it was wonderful to be reminded how mission-oriented and committed law enforcement and other government officials in this area are. They clearly recognize that when your average consumer pushes the install button for a free computer app, the experience remains far too risky. But that shouldn’t be – and it doesn’t have to be.
A big thank you to everybody who met with us from the FBI, FTC, Department of Justice, and U.S. Senate, and to our new friends at the National Cyber Security Alliance and National Consumers League, too. Our trip further convinced us of the founding principle behind AppEsteem’s existence: that together, law enforcement, government agencies, security companies, consumer advocates, and software developers can make the internet safer for everybody.
