Facebook Receives $873 Million Compensation from Spammer Adam Guerbuez

As per the news reported by TheEarthTimes on November 24, 2008, Facebook, the famous social networking site, claimed that it suffered damages of $873 Million on account of a spammer who sent millions of unwanted messages to the site users.

The reports disclosed that Jeremy Fogel, Northern District Court Judge, California, ruled in the third week of November 2008 that the accused Adam Guerbuez had violated the 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM)). The court ordered that he would have to pay attorney's fees, statutory damages and aggravated statutory damages as compensation to Facebook by mid of December 2008. However, the Facebook lawyers are apprehensive of his potential to pay the compensation.

With the disclosure of the case details, it was found that Facebook filed a case against Guerbuez and his company Atlantis Blue Capital in the month of August 2008 for violating the company's Terms of Service by sending spam messages to the site users.

As per the complaint filed by Facebook, Guerbuez accessed password and login details of Facebook members and in some cases, he lured victims to phishing sites where these people unknowingly revealed their personal details. He used these details to get into members' profiles to pump out spam. Moreover, Facebook charged Guerbuez of sending over four million spam messages to its members during March-April 2008.

Besides, the spam sent by Guerbuez could be seen as someone viewing an affected Facebook profile. The profile also gave an impression that the account holder or a friend, who posted it, endorsed it. A wide range of products were endorsed in these spam messages, such as male enhancement pills, marijuana and sexually oriented material, said the court complaint, as reported by TheEarthTimes.

Adam O'Donnell, Director of Emerging Technology, Cloudmark, which provides spam blocking solutions to social networking sites, said that spammers are increasingly focusing their attention on social networks because users think that the message they received came from friends; therefore, they are not viewed as spam, as reported by SFGate on November 24, 2008.

O'Donnell further added that there is a decline in spam messages entering social networking users' inboxes compared to six months ago because spammers have turned their attention overseas under pressure from the US law enforcement.

Related article: Facebook Users Should be Careful of a Computer Virus

» SPAMfighter News - 12/9/2008