Facebook wins 711 Million Dollars from a spam affair

The social networking site Facebook has obtained a considerable amount in damages plus interest from a Californian court. Sanford Wallace has to pay 711 million dollars for his spamming acts.

At the beginning of the year Facebook, who hasn’t been spared from spam, sued a well known spammer in the United Stated named Sanford Wallace. This person was deemed to be so good at what he did that he had the nickname Spamford.

This was all run of the mill stuff for Spamford, who was accused of having polluted the social networking site with messages that had supposedly come from friends. To do this, dedicated accounts were created, while others were cracked after having stolen user’s details through phishing activities.


The battle won, but not the war
Facebook were today rejoicing in their victory, with this being "another battle won against spam". A Californian judge has demanded that Spamford Wallace pay a colossal 711 million dollars in damages to the social networking site, which goes to show that it doesn’t pay breaking the American anti-spam legislature.

For Facebook, this isn’t a record from this kind of activity as in November 2008, Facebook obtained 873 million dollars from a Canadian spammer. These are amounts which will surely never be paid, but are such that they should at least remain dissuasive, perhaps…

Sanford Wallace has gone through the years continuing with his aim of spreading spam, ever since he first got the taste for it in the 1990’s when millions of unwanted email messages were sent from the accounts of CompuServe and AOL subscribers. He even founded the commercial marketing company Cyber Promotions, with his goal being to attract internet users to various sites, with his payment being linked to the amount of traffic generated.

Sanford Wallace and some of his colleagues are certainly not afraid of spending time in court: already he has had judgements against him for 234 million dollars to MySpace and 4 million dollars in fines for installing spyware on computers… it appears that Spamford has rather deep pockets, although it is possible criminal charges could also be filed, which could lead to prison time.