Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Spammer Fined $360 Million
An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has been awarded $360,500,000 in damages against spammer Philip Porembski, who phished the login details of at least 116,000 Facebook users and sent more than 7.2 million spam messages to victims' online friends. Facebook claimed it received more than 8,000 complaints from users as a result of the spam campaign, and more than 4,500 users had deactivated their accounts."
And how much of that are Facebook passing along to the actual victims?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Having an easy-to-use phishing platform?
So each Facebook account is worth 80,000 dollars? Well who wants to buy mine?
There was no "fine". This is a civil judgement. Were it a fine, it might have some teeth behind it, but the spammer can essentially laugh off a civil monetary award. Remember, he's a criminal, so it's not like obeying the law is something that he does. All this does is prevent him from inheriting anything from his parents.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"more than 4,500 users had deactivated their accounts." ...Every cloud has a silver lining.
$360million is a meaningless number which accomplishes nothing. $8,000 would actually have an impact. I'm with the Republicans on this one, tort reform is long overdue.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Spammer: So....how would you like that..a check? IOU? How about I pay you in email accounts for it?
Good luck getting that judgment.
In the meantime, someone wrongfully gets sent to prison and once exonerated, only receives an award that is a fraction of that amount.
*sigh*
If you don't pay your civil debts you can be jailed. This is the likely end of the situation.
Put this bozo in prison for a LONG time. Gitmo his ass. He deserves it. We (the tech community) must clean up the spammers, hustlers, and criminals on the internet. If we don't (and no one else will or can do it) then no one will take us seriously and OUR vision of what the internet is supposed to be will be overruled by lawyers, global corporations, and their goon squads.
It is unlikely that this asshole actually has $360,000 to pay the fine. And he committed a serious wide-ranging crime of fraud. So, yes, put this jerk in jail for a long time. Or at least as long as the feds would put a college student in hard jail for selling a little bag of bud to another college student. Which is a long time.
$360 million dollars is a laughable joke. It might as well have been $360 trillion. This guy will never pay even 1% of that amount, and I'm amazed that anyone in the justice department thought Facebook was damaged for $360million because they lost 4,500 users. If so, doing the math, Facebook should pay me around $80,000 just to keep my account activated. Ok, well they can keep 5%, a decent profit margin.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Even facebook wont get a dime out of this, but I would bet that asshole wont be in the spam business anymore.
I deactivated my account a long time ago because facebook was spamming me... I guess it doesn't work in reverse... hmmm... something to say....
In soviet russia, face books you!"
That doesn't even make sense... Yes, I know.
If you don't pay your civil debts you can be jailed. This is the likely end of the situation.
In America you only go to jail if you REFUSE to pay a civil judgment and get a contempt of court citation.
If you CANNOT pay there's no prison.
Otherwise OJ Simpson would've been in debtor's prison shortly after the Ronald Goldman civil verdict appeals were exhausted.
It's not unheard of for people to make themselves "legally broke" to escape seizure and "legally very low income" to escape garnishment the rest of their lives (or until that state's limit on collecting judgments expires) after a civil judgment, much to the chagrin of whoever got the judgment against them.
Where are the criminal charges? Last time I checked phishing was illegal.
They'll get 99.9999% of anything that this spammer coughs up. After all, they have to feed & clothe their poor offspring.
My heart bleeds for them
Yeah, I got screwed by a lawyer.
Come the revolution, the first up against the wall will be the lawyers.
How many of them blew up?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Really?
The most they can do is "attach" your assets and ruin your credit.
Although, life in America such a mark on your credit would be very prison-like.
Fines and damages are two different things. I am pretty sure there's no fine, just damages.
> ...the spammer can essentially laugh off a civil monetary award.
Nonsense. The ruling empowers Facebook to forceably seize any of his property they can lay hands on, get liens on real estate, and get court orders requiring banks to transfer his accounts to them. He will be forced to file a petition for bankruptcy.
> All this does is prevent him from inheriting anything from his parents.
Where did you get that idea?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I hate spammers, but I almost as strongly hate the fact that statutory damages can me several orders of magnitude higher than actual damages. (viz Jammie Thomas...)
How can they "receive complaints" there is no section to file a complaint, just a little button to click as "spam". Also, Facebook is known to "spam" as well. When I attempted to cancel my account, it was immediately hacked, spammed all my friends. Then it took me a half of a day to get my account back. Then I had to redo my cancelation.
Shows how much people value Facebook. It's sad really that they are willing to have their privacy abused and then go back to the abuser for more.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
His bank accounts are long since empty and properties have been hidden. The guy's a scammer, he scams for a living. Getting sued was part of the business plan from the beginning.
When you have judgments out against you, and you have zero assets, one thing they can do is wait years until you get an inheritance, and then legally take that.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why doesn't Facebook give the money thus awarded to the people who actually got their accounts hacked ? Isn't it up to Facebook to compensate the users?
But the again, Facebook is run by greedy bastards... oh ok no surprise there then
He is not in Jail?
That just means he will re-offend.
I thought spamming had serious consequences.
A big fine is not going to do anything.
Did you know that the US already has the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world? Are you aware that the vast majority of prisoners in the US are non-violent and pose no threat to anybody?
Do you realize how much money and power a system like this justifies for the elite who run the business of government?
There's a reason why every year government costs more than the year before, and commands more power over the people than the year before. A legal system heavily biased towards incarceration is a key part of this never-ending expansion of government, and if you open your eyes a bit wider, was a key part of every tyranny that has ever existed.
So next time you feel the need to cheer on the incarceration of a non-violent criminal, I hope you realize that what you are cheering is the endless expansion of government. But here's the kicker, if you're man enough to admit it: none of this was done for your benefit.
Under a moral and just system of law, the only proper response to non-violent crimes is restitution. And no, $360 million isn't restitution -- it's a power-hungry judge gone mad.
I wouldn't pay...
If we're looking at the damages done to Facebook as a result of the perpetrators actions, the only really meaningful measure of value on Facebook is the number of people using it (and therefore seeing/clicking the ads). Assuming the users lost were all Facebook users of 'typical value', $360,000,000 for 4500 lost users comes out to someone figuring that Facebook has the potential to make $80,000 off of each user.
That seems excessive.
Why not make facebook pay up since they allowed this to happen?
Your Facebook account is owned by Facebook. Facebook invested financial resources to develop it, and they have a financial interest in maintaining it.
If you consider that this continuous revenue stream may last the rest of your life, the value doesn't sound so unreasonable (they will likely make tens of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue during that time). If they charged you $100/year for an advertisement free service, you'd probably end up paying them around $6,000.
Furthermore, the $300,000,000 is divided between the lost accounts and the compromised ones. Either effects their advertising revenue.
I hope this guy decides not to do this anymore. How someone can make a living that way and sleep at night is beyond me. I honestly believe I'd rather starve to death.
Most people are missing the point here: Facebook has only raised 600 million in private offerings. How can a few thousand pieces of spam which affected .01% of all Facebook users actually be worth almost as much as all the cash FB has ever raised in auctions?
This is like saying the man who spit on your million dollar Lamborghini owes you 500k because your car doesn't look as nice as it did last week.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
The summary says "damages". As for the headline, if "fined" is not flexible enough in meaning to cover both awarding damages to a plaintiff and awarding fines to the state, then what other verb's passive participle covers damages?
Eat that, fuckin spammer shitface! Oh yea and ENJOY!!
Not enough. Must be raped.
The insight from the slashdot sig under this very story:
"You know, the difference between this company and the Titanic is that the Titanic had paying customers."
Hopefully he can convert his Farmville money over to the real world to pay that fine!
So Facebook files suit because they made a steaming pile and millions stepped in it. Since when was there a reasonable expectation of privacy on a social networking site, let alone Facebook? If people are stupid enough to use it, how can there be a reasonable argument for the (intended) outcome? i.e. advertising.
Facebook is asking for $360,500,000 in damages because 4,500 users deactivated their accounts. That puts the value of a single Facebook account at just over $80,000.
Mark, if my "spam_from_facebook@" email and my home address ("1060 West Addison") were worth that much to you, you didn't need to set up a giant web site to get them. Just write me a cheque and I'll send you all of that along with a few more details of my made-up life.
That's 360 MILLION not thousand...
Lisa : Sorry Dad..
Homer (from hospital bed) : It's ok honey... we just could have really used that $12,000
Lisa : Um.. dad, 10 percent of 12 Million isn't 12 thousand... its....
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
"more than 4,500 users had deactivated their accounts." Sounds like what we need here is more spammers spamming facebook
A "civil monetary award" is not meaningless. I can't say I know much about the Facebook case at hand, but I once incurred a judgement against myself for a petty traffic accident. I was dealing with a much more serious case (a Missouri DFS case in which Missouri took out baby at birth because my wife was taking the legal medication methadone), and in order to concentrate my attention, I decided to ignore the stupid (totally unjust, BTW) traffic civil case. The scammers managed to get a 6.5K$ judgement, and then I lost my drivers license because of it. I didn't know that was possible. Eventually, over the years, I spent several days in jail and thousands $ because of the case. It's now eleven years passed and I'm still suffering seriously from it. My point is that a civil judgement is NOT nothing. ~~ Nehmo
(||) Nehmo (||)
I always did wonder what the facebook strategy for making money was, I now understand: implement hopelessly secure systems and sue those who break in.
Brilliant - I just wish that I had thought of that!
He was charged exactly $5 per Spam message that he sent, and it was statutory damages. Real cost like a nickel to a half dollar, and it should be distributed to those who were spamed (Look for a class action lawsuit against face book if they ever collect a significant portion of this award.)
Monetary fines never proved to be disincentives for crime. $360M is still MUCH cheaper than the death penalty, of even cutting off his pinkie.
Such a good idea. What is the spammer going to do, go out spamming to make up the money to pay off that crushing debt?