When this reporter returned the phone call to Smith, he sounded surprised to hear that this reporter actually wanted to interview him regarding the claims that he made on his blog about Christian organizations as well as his faith background. Smith agreed to an interview scheduled for the next day.

The co-author of a recent Christianity Today article is one of the founders of Zango, a company fined by the FTC for unfair and deceptive business practices, including lax distribution of software that furthered child pornography. The Christianity Today article was co-written by Ted Olsen and Ken Smith, who founded 180solutions (which later became Zango), a company with software that had been “distributed in conjunction with child pornography,” according to documents obtained by The Christian Post. 

An online search of Smith confirms his relationship as chief technology officer and one of the founders of Zango, a Washington state-based software company that was known for installing intrusive adware that took over a computer’s browser and bombarded the user with pop-up ads. 

The Christian Post looked into Smith’s possible connection to pornography after readers alerted the newspaper that one of the authors of a recent Christianity Today article shared the same name as Zango founder Ken Smith. Commenters provided links about a Ken Smith that had founded 180solutions Inc. (earlier name ePIPO) around 2000, which later merged with Hotbar to form Zango Inc., a company which for a period of time had affiliates that distributed links to child porn. 

The Christianity Today story by Olsen and Smith in the September issue has produced a firestorm of criticism of the publication from global Christian leaders. 

On his Facebook Timeline, Ken Smith said he “spent basically the entire month of July working with Ted Olsen from Christianity Today” on their article. 

Several readers of Christianity Today’s article reported that comments exposing Smith’s background had been deleted on the website within minutes to an hour of posting. A few commenters even re-posted on the CT article questioning why their comments were deleted. Several readers sent complaints about these occurrences to CP. 

These users reported to CP that some of these comments included information about Smith’s past involvement in Zango and 180solutions. Zango, the company where Smith had served as founder and chief technology officer, was fined $3 million by the Federal Trade Commission for unfair and deceptive business practices. Smith later stepped down from his post and his brother, who was the CEO of Zango, later filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009. The company shut down after a foreclosure of a bank consortium.

Other comments pointed to Smith’s 180solutions, which had affiliates that distributed child pornography, according to documents obtained by The Christian Post. 

A chief compliance officer of 180solutions, Ken McGraw, confirmed that the company’s “180search Assistant had been distributed in conjunction with child pornography” in a September 2005 email sent to Alex Eckelberry, a writer of a technical news website:

Alex,

I’m Ken McGraw, Chief Compliance Officer for 180solutions. Thank you for letting us know about the instance you discovered where 180search Assistant had been distributed in conjunction with child pornography. With your help, we have been able to confirm this to be true and will be taking the following actions:

* Based on pressure from us, Simpel Internet has ceased all distribution operations until they can get better control of their affiliates.

* We will cooperate with law enforcement in any way we can to ensure that justice is brought in this case.

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 Read Response From Ken Smith Here