Software Laws

Hi all,

A quick question regarding software / internet laws.

A relative recently visited a porn website (tsk tsk, I know) which resulted in him having a peice of software from MBS Billing Systems installed on his computer. He wasn't aware of it being installed at the time and didn't provide any personal information. I had a look about for him and the company is under a lot of scrutiny for the actions. It basically claims you owe the website £xx.xx and doesn't stop til you pay.

What I was wondering is if there is a law regarding how software behaves or not? The "software" which is installed can't be "uninstalled" through control panel, auto starts each time windows starts and basically renders your computer unusuable for a pre-defined amount of time before you can close the window. I was under the impression (being a developer myself) there was some sort of code of conduct with regard to software, in that you surely arent allowed to create something which stops the user being able to do anything else on their computer without them willingly starting the program.

The OFT (office of fair trading) is onto the company for suspicious business activity but I'm more interested in the legaility of the software behaviour. Is anyone on here aware of a set of laws that software must abide by?

PS - It also seemed to watch when you entered passwords/usernames, and redirected my relative to a page asking for bank details when he signed into online banking account. I've advised he reset all passwords he has used since having the software.

AVG + Spybot didn't find all the files, only some of them. I had to manually delete them from system32 after endless searching.

also a good firewall with built in program control would be helpful for preventing any further problems although i do not know of one.

sorry, not quite related to your question.