Here’s the way it worked:

Consumers had the option of signing up for a three-day trial of the service, after which pop-up windows began appearing and demanding payment of a license fee ranging from $19.95 to $99. The FTC complaint (PDF) claimed the pop-ups “significantly disrupt consumers’ use of their computers,” and “redisplay again and again with ever-increasing frequency.”

Very sleezy. If you’re going to charge for the license, just do so off the bat. Anyway, they’ve settled with the FTC, and if you’ve been affected, you may be eligible for a restitution.

As part of the settlement, signed September 5 by a federal judge, the Web operations agreed to provide consumers with a way to uninstall their software, to refrain from downloading software onto a user’s computer without his or her consent, and to pay a little more than $500,000 for “consumer redress.”

Yes, that means some consumers will be eligible for some sort of payout, said FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell. But there’s no need for people who think they might be eligible to contact the FTC because “as part of the settlement, the defendants will provide us with a database of consumers who are eligible and a redress administrator will contact them,” she added in an e-mail interview. It wasn’t immediately clear, however, what the eligibility requirements are in the first place.

I wonder how many people will share in that $500,000. You know those letters you get in the mail from law firms, asking you to sign on to their lawsuit against a major company for something they allegedly did you wrong on? So you bite, and end up getting like $5 for it if it’s successful? I’m thinking it’ll be similar here.