Facebook wins 873-million-dollar award against spammer

Nov 24, 2008, 22:43 GMT

San Francisco - Social networking site Facebook has won an 873-million-dollar damages award against a spammer who inundated users of the site with millions of unwanted messages, the company said Monday.

In a blog posting, the company's director of security Max Kelly said the award by the US District Court in San Jose was the largest judgment in history for an action brought under the country's anti- spam legislation, known as the Controlling the Assault of Non- Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).

The judgement was made against Adam Guerbuez of Montreal and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital which is registered in Panama.

'It's unlikely that Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honour the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can),' said Kelly. 'But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users.'

According to the complaint, Guerbuez sent more than 4 million spam messages to Facebook users between March and April. He allegedly did so by stealing Facebook users' logon details using phishing messages and through data obtained from third parties. He then allegedly bombarded Facebook users' message posting pages, or 'walls,' with messages from the hijacked accounts of spam recipients' Facebook friends.

The sleazy messages could be viewed by anyone viewing an affected Facebook profile, and appeared to be endorsed by the account owner and the friend who posted it.

'The spam promoted numerous products and Web sites that, on information and belief, are offensive and embarrassing,' the complaint explains. 'The products marketed by these spam messages included marijuana, male enhancement pills and sexually oriented material.'