Yahoo! sued over software pushing

BEIJING: A Beijing software group is suing Yahoo! China in an attempt to stop the company secretly foisting programmes on to computer users, the state press said on Wednesday.         

The Anti-Hooligan Software Federation brought the case before the capital's Haidian district court on Tuesday, accusing Yahoo! China of making $25 million from the practice, the China Daily said.           

The group is accusing the Internet giant of forcing software such as the Yahoo! Assistant, a "browser helper for Internet Explorer", on to users without their knowledge, the paper said.    

It argues the software has pop-up advertisements bundled into it, allegedly generating 200 million yuan ($25 million) for Yahoo! China by June 2005, the report said.             

The plaintiffs are only seeking 94 yuan ($11.7) in damages, it said. It did not explain how they had arrived at this amount.              

A Yahoo! China spokesman told the paper that the company ended the automatic installation of the software in September 2005 and now asks the permission of Internet users before installing.       

The software federation hopes to end the online dissemination of similar products -- which it refers to as "hooligan software" -- and plans to sue other Internet companies like auction site Ebay.com and Chinese search engine Baidu.com, the paper said.    

Hooligan software includes unwanted advertisements; spyware or software that can steal personal information; trackware, that can find out where people live and work; and malicious software such as pornographic material, it said.