A federal judge has ordered a man known as the "Spam King" to disable so-called spyware programs that infiltrate people's computers, track their Internet use and flood them with pop-up advertising.

U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico issued a temporary restraining order Thursday against Stanford Wallace and his companies, SmartBot.net Inc. of Richboro, Pa., and Seismic Entertainment Productions Inc. of Rochester. SmartBot's principal place of business is Barrington. Prosecutors sought the injunction on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission, which targeted Wallace in its first anti-spyware action. The judge ordered Wallace to remove software code that exploits security holes in computer operating systems and Web browsers, then tracks people's Internet use to bombard them with pop-up ads. Wallace also is accused of trying to sell computer users $30 remedies called "Spy Wiper" and "Spy Deleter" that the FTC says don't work. "Spyware" describes a broad category of software that can be installed through unsafe e-mails or Web pages. It sometimes is bundled with other software that consumers download and install, such as file-sharing programs that can be used to download music and movies illegally. Spyware programs quietly monitor which Web sites a consumer visits, and some may even redirect users to different sites. They can make computers sluggish or cause them to crash.