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."

Comments

wrong plaintiff

[tverbeek]

And how much of that are Facebook passing along to the actual victims?

Re:wrong plaintiff

[Talderas]

Facebook is getting paid $80,111.11 for each deactivated account. I estimate that $0 will be passed along to those that deactivated their account.

Re:wrong plaintiff

[gorzek]

They won't pass along any of it because they're not likely to get an appreciable portion of that sum from the defendant. Do you really think the average spammer has $360M stashed away somewhere?

Re:wrong plaintiff

[joocemann]

And how much of that are Facebook passing along to the actual victims?

Don't you get a free online photo storage/sharing messaging service that includes a chat messenger and highly functional plugin-like apps/games?

Security is not absolute, and surely they do not take the attacks lightly, but I'm not sure how/why someone should GET money when they've paid nothing into the system (aside from personal information that they willingly released for use/resell).

Re:wrong plaintiff

[Stregano]

I am pretty sure your user information has already been sold by Facebook and I am also pretty sure you will get as much of that 3k that you got for FB selling your information.

Re:wrong plaintiff

[ifrag]

highly functional plugin-like apps/games

Wow, sounds like Facebook has really changed a lot since I last checked.

Re:wrong plaintiff

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

I don't have to look at the ads? Where's the option to turn them off, then? I can't seem to find the setting... Yeah, yeah, I know, adblock.

It isn't about why facebook owes anybody any money. Facebook wasn't the victim. Facebook was not compromised. It shouldn't have received the settlement in the first place.

Jail the jerk

[Simonetta]

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.

Re:Stupid Court System

[Anonymous Coward]

$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.

Yep, an $8000 fine for 7.2 million spam messages *would* have an impact. It would demonstrate that there's no punishment for doing it, and ENCOURAGE IT.

Funny how the same fucks who are always whinging about "tort reform" are typically screaming about how we need to be "tough on crime" with uber-long sentences. Apparently, doing crime only counts if you're unfortunate enough to not be rich.

Re:Stupid Court System

[John Hasler]

> 360million is a meaningless number which accomplishes nothing.

It bankrupts the spammer.

> $8,000 would actually have an impact.

That might not bankrupt him.

> I'm with the Republicans on this one, tort reform is long overdue.

Aside from the fact that "tort reform" is an insurance industry con, this has nothing to do with it. The suit was brought under a Federal statute which fixes the damages. "Tort reform" is about product liability and malpractice torts.