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Facebook Spammer Fined $360 Million

Posted by Soulskill on from the take-a-check? dept.

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."

9 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. wrong plaintiff by tverbeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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    1. Re:wrong plaintiff by gorzek · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

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    2. Re:wrong plaintiff by joocemann · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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).

    3. Re:wrong plaintiff by Stregano · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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    4. Re:wrong plaintiff by asdfghjklqwertyuiop · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. Awarded damages for what? by lordandmaker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Having an easy-to-use phishing platform?

  3. No debtors prison in America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  4. Statutory damages: I hate spammers but... by thisisauniqueid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...)

  5. Re:Well... by Mr.Intel · · Score: 4, Funny

    It depends on how it's denominated. $1 bills weigh about 1 gram, which is about 0.0022 pounds. $360 million in $1 bills therefore is about 792,000 pounds.

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