Facebook welcomes court ruling against Canadian spammer
Technology ( 8 )
WASHINGTON —
Facebook welcomed on Monday a U.S. court ruling against a Canadian spammer ordered to pay $873 million in damages for sending unwanted messages to users of the popular social network.
Max Kelly, Facebook’s director of security, called the U.S. District Court ruling in San Jose, California, an “important victory for our users—and against spam and those who create it.”
Judge Jeremy Fogel on Friday ordered Adam Guerbuez and his company Atlantis Blue Capital to pay $436.2 million in statutory damages and another $436.2 million in aggravated statutory damages for violations of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM).
“Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users?” asked Kelley in a posting on the Facebook blog. “Alas, no. It’s unlikely that Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them.”
“But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users,” he added.
“Everyone who participates constructively in Facebook should feel confident that we are fighting hard to protect you against spam and other online nuisances,” Kelly said.
“We will continue to invest in this area by improving our technical safeguards and devoting significant resources to finding, exposing and prosecuting the sources of spam attacks.”
Facebook began legal action against Guerbuez in August, claiming that he had managed to obtain the passwords of Facebook users and was bombarding them with millions of messages about sexual products and drugs.
Judge Fogel also permanently barred Guerbuez, who lives in Montreal, and Atlantis Blue Capital from any future contact with Facebook.
The judgment was the largest since a pair of accused spammers, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, were ordered in May by another California court to pay some $230 million to MySpace, a social networking site.
Wire reports
Order by Time Order by Popularity
8 Comments
Login to comment
0
franz75
spammers should be shot, not fined.
0
soldave
But no money will be collected and given to any Facebook users, be they in Canada, the USA, or Japan.
0
thepro
Ouch. Take that, pal.
0
UsernameTaken
Eleventy Billlllion Dollars!!!!
Most people don't realize that the Canadian economy is based enirely on maple syrup and spam emails.
0
Altria
Spammer woke up to find a man and a horse peering through his window - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police!
Stick that in your zamboni and smoke it!!!
0
Good_Jorb
Of course it is, all that maple syrup is needed to keep the spammers on sugar high so they can remain competitive. Where would the world be with out unsolicited viagra and other boner pill ads?
He was then taken away by dog sled, making only one stop at a Timmy Ho's for a donut and a double-double.
It's good to see a spammer taken down but how much spam is he going to send out to recoup a $873 million loss?
0
jonobugs
As much as I'd like to believe it means something, I doubt it will have any impact on spammers other than shutting down the 'legal' operation of this particular spammer. I still receive an average of 10 spam messages a day on my junk account...and that's after they've been filtered. I really wonder who the heck answers those ads?
Back to top