Holy Fakes, Batman!

Maybe it’s time to give stiffer penalties than fines to online deceivers—sounds like companies like Zango just consider them a cost of doing business. The company’s most recent attempt to put Adware on unsuspecting kids’ computers comes in the form of an online Batman game.

Christopher Boyd at fined $3 million by the FTC in 2006 for secretly installing adware and making it impossible to remove.

Stipulations in that settlement were subsequently expose kids to porno ads (WB subsequently removed their Zango association), and again later via a Facebook application purporting “secret crushes” to members, who only got adware junk instead.

This pattern of paying regulatory fines but continuing with shady behavior isn’t limited to Zango. Recently we reported the connection between “social network” Tagged.com founder and his former company Jumpstart, which was