A Beijing software group is suing Yahoo! China in an attempt to stop the company secretly foisting their programs on to computer users, state press, quoted by an AFP report said
The AFP report said the Anti-Hooligan Software Federation brought the case before the capital's Haidian district court, accusing Yahoo! China of making $25 million from the practice, according to the China Daily.
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 AFP report 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.
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 AFP report said.
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.