Facebook has won a $873 million judgment against a Canadian sued for spamming users of the social networking site with "sexually explicit" messages after hacking into the profiles of its members.Rico says you should go to Ballervision immediately and help this poor fuck pay his fine...
Adam Guerbuez, of Montreal, who runs Atlantis Blue Capital and Ballervision, was ordered to pay exemplary damages by US District Judge Jeremy Fogel. Guerbuez did not contest the case, which also resulted in an injunction against him that effectively prevents him from accessing Facebook for any reason ever again.
The damages levied were high because Guerbuez was ruled to have have illegally accessed Facebook user profile data in order to mount his junk message campaign, using tactics that violated the federal CAN-SPAM Act. Guerbuez allegedly bombarded Facebook users with four million messages selling male enhancement pills and other assorted crap. He tricked users into coughing up their login details using a variety of phishing tricks, then used these compromised profiles to bombard other users with invasive messages.
Social networking sites are becoming an increasingly commonplace medium for the distribution of junk mail messages. Earlier this year MySpace won a $230m judgment against notorious junk mailer Sanford 'Spamford' Wallace and Walter Rines. The Facebook ruling is the highest payout ever ordered under the CAN-SPAM Act. Facebook has little hope recovering anything but a tiny fraction of the award, but is still gunning for Guerbuez. "It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them, though we will certainly collect everything we can. But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users," said Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security.
25 November 2008
Like he's gonna have that kind of money
According to The Register:
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