The FTC Has Your Back, Even When It's Naked: FTC Orders P2P Program's Default File Sharing Settings Changed

On October 12, 2011, the FTC announced that it, along with Frostwire LLC and FrostWire's managing member, Angel Leon, (collectively, "FrostWire"), agreed to a stipulated final order for permanent injunction resulting from the FTC's complaint alleging that (a) users of FrostWire's Android mobile file-sharing application were likely to unwittingly share personal files stored on their mobile devices with other P2P users after installing and running the application, and (b) FrostWire misrepresented to users of FrostWire's desktop file-sharing application that certain files they downloaded would not be shared with other P2P users.

Specifically, the complaint alleged that the Android application shared, by default, all content on the user's phone, whether preexisting, downloaded or user-generated (e.g. "intimate pictures," as characterized by the FTC). If the user wanted to limit the sharing by changing the application's settings, the user had to "laboriously unshare