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Facebook awarded $711 million in spam lawsuit

Tony Valdivieso — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:28:07 +0000

Facebook recently won another battle against spam, this time, dethroning the self-proclaimed king of spammers. Found guilty of violating a federal anti-spam law by a California judge, Sanford Wallace has been ordered to pay Facebook $711 million in a civil damages. Facebook originally sought $7 billion in damages.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Facebook claimed Wallace violated the federal anti-spam law, known as CAN-SPAM, roughly 14 million times. Wallace allegedly sent numerous Facebook members a link to a website which tricked them into revealing their login information. Wallace then used these accounts to spam the account holders’ friends with phony messages and wall posts.

“While we don’t expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals,” read an official statement released by the Facebook legal team. “Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney’s Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time. This is another important victory in our fight against spam. We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers.”

Rather than bidding the ’spam king’ a fond farewell, most Twitterers made light of the situation, some wanting to know what is going to happen to all that money:

IMN_ (Petersburg, VA) Facebook was awarded $711 million in a spam suit?? Are you kidding me?? Wtf! As if they needed any MORE funding for anything.. Capitalism :/ 30 Oct 2009 from UberTwitter

dwlz (Los Angeles, CA) It’s plain ridiculous that Facebook just got awarded $711 million in spam “damages”. What do the people who were spammed get, if anything? 30 Oct 2009 from web

badcharts (Austin, TX) Facebook awarded $711 million in case against spammer. I think this must have something to do with FarmTown updates. 30 Oct 2009 from HootSuite

KristofferMarc (California) Hi FaceBook, can i get in on that $711 million dollar settlement? No, that’s cool.How about having your iphone application actually work? 30 Oct 2009 from Tweetie

CubanCherub (Undisclosed) Facebook wins $711 million in spam lawsuit. FB said that the award, made in Calif, was the “2nd largest in history” for an anti-spam action. 30 Oct 2009 from web

helveticavtimes (Undisclosed) HvT: Facebook Spammer Has to Pay $711 Million, Your Annoying ‘Friends’ Still Free to Poke You 30 Oct 2009 from Twitter Tools

AaronDavidWard (Ballston Spa, NY) A spammer owes $234 million to MySpace and $711 million to Facebook…and millions of hours to social networkers who have to delete. 01 Nov 2009 from web

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Facebook pages for Mousavi and his wife call for national strike in Iran

Craig Kanalley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:07:55 +0000

The Facebook pages of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard called for an Islamic National Strike late Tuesday night.

Mousavi’s page updated first, about 7 p.m. local time, stating, “Strike: The manner of a man is better than his goverance. Help to bring this message back to IRAN.” Three hours later the status updated to “Dont underestimate the power of National islamic Strike.”

And early Wednesday, around 2 a.m. local time, both he and his wife’s pages updated to “Islamic Strike, help to spread the Voice out to fight the Bullets.” The message was posted twice in a row on both accounts.

There is no way to be sure Mousavi or his campaign staff are behind the accounts at this time. His page was utilized heavily leading up to Election Night and he now has more than 107,000 supporters. It has been used in the past since the election to let people know about upcoming events and demonstrations.

Text in Persian next to the updates ask people to spread the word via any means possible. A document written in Persian is attached, but it is an image file, so BT was unable to immediately translate it. Many are saying on Twitter that the file provides details on the strike. Some say the strike is to be held next Monday through Thursday and others say July 15-17.

It is worth noting that Mousavi’s Twitter account (@mousavi1388) has not yet posted about the strike.

Here was some immediate reaction to this development from the Twitterverse:

rtiran the youth of iran are on the streets fighting! we must continue our support! STRIKE! STRIKE! 30 Jun 2009 from web

BaabakXorramdin Etekaf is Islamic and legal => You can, stay @home next Monday – Thursday! Iran on national strike! #gr88 #iranelection #tehran #iran 30 Jun 2009 from web

shapour34 PARALIZE THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC. CALL FOR GENERAL STRIKE IN IRAN. 01 Jul 2009 from web

s3anryan i am really interested to see if mousavi pulls off organizing a national islamic strike in iran next week. #iranelection 01 Jul 2009 from Tweetie

korkie Have a peaceful strike. The lost of $$$ will bring chance. Be careful, be safe, be free. #iranelection #iran #neda #gr88 #freeiran 01 Jul 2009 from web

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