Here’s some news that caught my eye this morning. Zango is going to pay $3 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

I’ve been thinking a lot about Zango of late. One of our columnists, Rosalind Gardner, recently had some troubling experiences with the company. She’s written about it in her blog and also put together an interesting column on the topic of the January/February issue of Revenue.

In addition, the January/February issue of Revenue has a feature story about a particular facet of commission stealing and Zango comes up again as a big part of that article. I had lengthy discussions with John Gartner, the freelancer working on the piece, about Zango’s role in the story. Some of the on-the-record quote he has from Zango officials blew my mind. I can’t get into the specifics. You’ll just have to wait until the issue comes out at the start of the new year.

Anyway, a quick run down of today’s news on Zango.

*Zango agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it used unfair and deceptive methods to get consumers to download adware and then obstructed their efforts to remove it.

*Zango’s settlement with the FTC bars future downloads of Zango’s adware without consumers’ consent and requires Zango to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware.

*Zango must also give up the more than $3 million “in ill-gotten gains,” it acquired via these practices, the FTC said.

*The settlement does not constitute an admission by Zango that it violated the law.

*The settlement also prohibits Zango from using its adware to communicate with consumers’ computers - either by monitoring consumers’ Web surfing activities or delivering pop-up ads - without verifying that consumers consented to installation of the adware.

*Zango is also banned from, directly or through others, exploiting security vulnerabilities to download software, and the company is required to give clear and prominent disclosures and obtain consumers’ express consent before downloading software onto consumers’ computers.

*The settlement requires that Zango identify its ads and establish, implement and maintain user-friendly mechanisms consumers can use to complain, stop its pop-ups and uninstall its adware.

*Zango must now monitor its third-party distributors to assure that its affiliates and their sub-affiliates comply with the FTC order.

*The settlement contains standard record keeping provisions to allow the FTC to monitor compliance.

Read the complaint and other FTC info.

Despite all this, spyware/adware expert Ben Edelman, says, “I commend the FTC’s efforts here, but serious diligence will be required to assure that 180 [Zango’s previous name] actually complies with its many obligations under the settlement. At this instant, I am confident that it is not in compliance.”

He goes on to say, “180 continues plenty of bad practices, including some unlabeled ads, materially misleading installations that fail to disclose key aspects of 180’s effects, and installation attempts predicated on security exploits.”

Edelman says that he expects to post some proof of this on his website in the coming weeks.

I, for one, will be watching closely.

Let me know what you think about this latest development with Zango. lisap@revenuetoday.com