On Facebook, the spam you get from friends is bad enough, but tolerable. The really bad stuff is actual spam, which more and more people are being subject to. On Friday, judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose, California, awarded Facebook $873 million in damages against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital under the CAN-SPAM act. (Ruling embedded below). It is the largest award under the act ever granted, topping the $234 million award MySpace won against spammers last May.
The chances of Facebook ever collecting that amount from the defendants are minimal (spam pays, but not that much). Still, sit sends the right message to other Facebook spammers out there.
While it does not appear that the defendants will be facing any jail time, the judge has come up with a punishment that in this day and age might be worse: a permanent injunction against “using or accessing, whether directly or indirectly, Facebook’s data, information, computers, computer systems, computer networks, or Facebook user’s accounts, information or profiles for any reason whatsoever.”
I guess that includes any partner site that uses Facebook Connect or any of Facebook’s APIs. In other words, the judge just barred the defendants from using a large and growing portion of the Web.
Facebook Wins $873 Million Against Spammers – Get more Legal Forms
oops….my bad. sorry I pasted it here. there ain’t no delete option:(
i hate spam. i also hate those drive by phantom comment haters that are just as bad. cant we all just be productive.
PostalLocator.com
umm but everyday you post a url after your comments even though you get a link in your title in the title. I would liken you to spam.
Thanks, MailboxLocator.com … I was just looking for the definition of irony.
Is it not irony that Facebook is collecting on a judgment for spam? How did Facebook get so big in the last year? By allowing 3rd party apps to spam its communication channels. If Facebook does collect the judgment, it should pass it right along to its users.
Bring it on fanboys..
Mailboxlocator.com? That doesn’t even make sense! And postallocator.com is equally useless, since usps.gov has a postal locator on the front page. Go away, locator-domain man. Go far, far away…
pot calling the kettle black
Spammers can do nothing but to declare bankruptcy.. US govt. should bail them out!
I also hate spam, but in China, there are some different thought among generation gaps toward to spam,
$873 Million! If only the spammer had the luck that I have – I have been contacted by DR CLEMENT OKON WHO IS TOP GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL AND IS SEEKING ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER FUNDS FLOATING IN THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA READY FOR PAYMENT.
Please forward the request from “Dr Okon” to the stupid “locator” spammer…
facebook sez:
there’s a new daddy in town, a discipline daddy.
To me, the moral victory here is sufficient. As they are taming back the FB App platform from its original spammieness, its great to see them on the offensive everywhere.
yeah man… another daddy up indeed…..I hate the spam i get on my gmail bulk folder too… google says so much about blocking such spam but I receive a lot of it in my bulk folder…. they make one feel a complete failure on bed anyday… lolz….bloody buggers.
Nice!
And what about the people?…those that got spammed
Crazy amount, but good thing – need to get rid of spam altogether. Especially with the increase in invitations sent via online address book integration. If you are a social network and end up sending a lot of email then do it right, use someone like http://www.sailthru.com that manage all of the sending.
They do it for us and it’s easy for our invitees to globally optout – and they provide the API for the address book integration.
The judge should have banned them from the internet all together.
Is Jeremy Fogel related to that SUBWAY guy Jared?
I can’t believe that the judge Jeremy Foge is letting Adam Guerbuez off the hook that easy. So he can’t use Facebook any longer – he’ll just move to the next fad of online social networking sites. Oh well, at least Facebook took action.
Typo in post sit -> it.
I don’t quite get it. What denotes “spam” on FB? Adding all the random people in the world on FB is considered spam in many ways, or even constantly sharing links (like most of us bloggers do).
Just give him the Guillotine!
Speak for yourself.
I find being spammed by my ‘friends’ on facebook to be completely intolerable. It’s absurd to get spam messages from people I knew 20 years ago advertising entirely pointless facebook apps.
If I got banned from Facebook, I’d be glad, not sad. The only thing that Facebook is good for is 5 cent/1000 advertisements to scam the chumps.
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
I commented over on the WB article, but it seems the same “judgement” is being portrayed here, so a rare copy/paste
I am not a lawyer, and US law is sometimes (at least for me) a confusing enigma, or at least the way it is portrayed.
It is my understanding that this was a default judgement, which seems to be just a way for the courts to tie up assets, with the total set high enough to tie up everything possible.
I would be horrified if this was a “real” judgement, as CAN-SPAM in relationship to social network communication is very much untested water.
Just a few examples…
1. Facebook just forced me to log into my account to change mail preferences
2. What is the real material difference between phishing, and asking people for their Gmail password to scrape their contacts to send out viral invites?
3. Emails from Facebook have no address details at all
4. If Facebook claim that the defendants didn’t provide a one click opt-out mechanism, yet they were using Facebook, then does that mean there is a prooblem with the Facebook interface? Is a wall post a “message” where every user has to have a chance to opt out from viewing wall posts of that user (the poster)?
Extrapolate it out further, and how does this have an effect on blog comment spam that ends up in the email box of subscribers. Who is then liable?
When Facebook users send invites to Facebook non-users, how is that not spam?
They should have just banned them from using the internet. That would have been awesome.
mailbox FAIL
Wait, so those millions are just fairy tales?
What is the need for the court case when the outcome (I mean the non payments) was determined before hand….
how can we block facebook from spamming my inbox to sign up?
Someone should sue Facebook for spamming. I never asked Facebook to help someone who just happened to have my email to send me email. It’s so frigging annoying. I tried to contact Facebook by phone to get them to remove my email altogether, but there wasn’t a phone number.
oss wipe.
Let this be a message for others, WE HATE SPAM. IM constantly fighting with spamer at http://tvradionet.com and other sites I own, its so annoying!
the punishment of not using facebook is really not that big a deal