The Attorney General for Washington and software giant Microsoft announced on Monday that the state had filed its seventh lawsuit against a purveyor of misleading spyware under the state's strengthened anti-spyware legislation.

In its latest case, the Attorney General's Office sued the marketers of a program called "Registry Cleaner XP" in King County Superior Court. The civil action targeted James Reed McCreary IV, a Texas resident, and his two businesses, claiming that they sent messages to victims' PCs via the Windows Messenger Service and used scare tactics to convince victims to buy the companies' product, according to court filings. Windows Messenger Service is a communications protocol intended to be used on local networks so that administrators can notify users of system-wide announcements.

"We won't tolerate the use of alarmist warnings or deceptive 'free scans' to trick consumers into buying software to fix a problem that doesn't even exist," Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said in a statement. "We've repeatedly proven that Internet companies that prey on consumers' anxieties are within our reach."

The lawsuit is the seventh time that the state's top prosecutor has used Washington's Computer Spyware Act, legislation passed in 2005. The act does not merely prohibit installing malicious programs on a victim's computer, but also outlaws misleading users into believing that a program is necessary for security. The U.S. House of Representatives has tried at least three times to pass anti-spyware legislation, but the bills have foundered in the U.S. Senate. The last bill, H.R. 964, failed to make it out of a Senate committee after passing the House. The Federal Trade Commission has also sued a number of spyware and spam marketers.

The complaint filed against McCreary levels five causes of action, including misrepresenting the necessity of the software, misrepresenting that victims' systems had "critical errors," and using high-pressure sales tactics through "incessant messages."

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