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Facebook Spammers Make $20M, Get $100K Fine
jfruh writes "Adscend Media, which has been making up to $20M a year from so-called 'likejacking' spam on Facebook, has reached an agreement with the Attorney General of Washington to stop those activities and pay $100,000 in court costs. Among other nefarious techniques, Adscend would overlay Facebook 'like' buttons with provocative photos to spread links to ads from which Adscend would earn referral fees. Adscend also settled out of court with Facebook for an undisclosed amount."
Banks crash the world economy selling junk loans, get 400 billion.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I like my 'lock them in their headquarters and set in on fire' plan better.
"one billionty dollars"
I don't understand, how provocative can you be with those tiny "Like" buttons? Maybe enough space to show 1/5th of a nipple? Perhaps they just color it with a skin tone to give people the impression they're looking at a naked button.
They didn't "make" 20 million. They collected 13 million in 2011, minus operating and labor costs, and earned about 2 million overall. So they were hit with a 5% fine.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Definitive proof that it is better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.
It seems like you're wrong. You and at least 3 people with mod points did not RTFA
In January, McKennaâ(TM)s office and Facebook sued Jeremy Bash and Fehzan Ali, the owners of Adscend Media LLC for initiating posts to Facebook pages that appeared to offer visitors an opportunity to view scandalous or provocative content. However, before being able to view the content, a series of required steps lured Facebook users into eventually visiting commercial websites. Other tactics included âoelikejacking,â in which Facebook users were tricked into clicking the âoelikeâ button, inadvertently spreading the sales pitches to friends.
Adscend, hired to promote products, in turn does business with âoeaffiliatesâ who create attention-getting marketing messages. Too often, according to the Attorney Generalâ(TM)s Office, those messages amounted to social media spam. Todayâ(TM)s settlement enjoins Adscend and its affiliates from initiating messages that contain misleading or false headers or those that hide the true identity of the sender
Ascend was spamming and getting paid by affiliates to spam on their behalf.
I really only have six words for Washington AG: Admission of Liability & Disgorgment of Profits
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
crime pays... like that's not a known fact by now.
Only in america.
I take it you didn't read the article and just came here to take a stab at Google as a freshmade account of that same old sockpuppeteer.
It was exactly Adscend Media that did the clickjacking, that's why they were sued (not just 'blamed'). Did you miss the part where "affiliate" means "closely related", unlike, you know, customer-provider relations of AdSense user with Google?
I do hope your backing accounts that modded this up get their due through metamoderation.
Ascend was spamming and getting paid by affiliates to spam on their behalf.
This shows you don't know how online advertising works. Why would affiliates pay Adscend? This is not how it works. Advertisers pay Adscend and in turn Adscend pays affiliates to promote those advertisers, usually for commissions. They act as kind of broker.
The news piece you pasted clearly says this too, especially the part about Adscend doing business with advertisers and then in turn affiliates.
Knowing the field (but not participating on the dark sides of it), there are many products and ways that are meant to hide the activity from these advertising companies. They exist because the affiliates will get (rightly) banned and no money paid when they are found out of doing shit like this.
I want to know what Facebook's share of the loot was and how Facebook profited from this.
Why does it seem like the small government imposed fine was small intentionally so that the larger part of the penalty could be a settlement with Facebook?
Which in my mind smells like Facebook profiting on their own complaint, which is a pretty sweet deal when you can complain to the government about somebody gaming your system (and hence, depriving you of a cut) and then get the government to basically recover your lost profits for you.
Dude, AdSense users are not called "affiliates", they're called "users". "Affiliate" presumes a different degree of closeness.
First, the obvious reason: as we've seen over and over and over again, spammers can make huge sums of money and then settle up pre-trial for a fraction of it. Then they can dissolve the company, move somewhere else, reincorporate, and use both the capital acquired and the lessons learned to try their hand at something even more abusive. The classic example of this is Sanford Wallace, but he's not the only one.
Second, the non-obvious reason: Facebook are spammers. But we don't see any AG going after them, because they're big and powerful, and they've wrapped themselves in the cloak of corporate respectability.
"...and, for the rest of your days, you shall feel the shame of not being able to afford the Gulfstream G6, and have to settle for an older G4. May God have mercy on your soul."
It's unfortunate that so many of my peers seem to blindly allow any kind of Facebook script/application run even if it requires the ability to post under your name, spreading spam like this. I have to admit I've clicked on a few of these links sometimes, those along the lines of "biggest boobs ever! Must watch" out of curiosity, only to be redirected to a malicious app at which point I just left the page.
The same goes for these new, legitimate news readers that tell which articles your friends read on Guardian for example, and clicking on the link leads to an app requesting permission to spy on me. No thanks, I'll just Google the damn title of the article if it's that hard to give me a direct link, ffs.
There's a whole industry out there spamming "social". At the top are the advertisers who want results and don't ask too many questions. Below them are the SEO firms, advertising things like "Guaranteed first page listings or your money back". Below them are the businesses that sell "bulk Likes", "+1"s, and fake reviews.
But that's not the bottom of the swamp. The people generating fake social rankings need services to help them. So there are outfits which sell fake Google, Facebook, and Yelp accounts in bulk. Software companies which sell tools for creating fake accounts in bulk. ("250,000 +1 votes per day on a fast connection" ) Outsourcing firms which create fake accounts. These operations tend not to advertise openly, but can be found on "black hat" SEO forums.
They, in turn, need support services. They need fake IP addresses and fake phone numbers for verification calls. There are services to provide those. You can rent phone numbers in bulk for 20 minutes. Bulk IP addresses, needed for bulk fake account creation, come from proxies, many of which come from malware on compromised machines. This is down at the organized crime level.
See our paper "Social is bad for search, and search is bad for social" for the gory details.
This all started in late 2010, when Google started feeding "local" social data into web search results. There had been social spamming before that, but it was a minor business. Once Google went "social", social spamming took off. Now, social spamming is mainstream SEO. It's cheaper than running a link farm. It's also safer. There's seldom any retaliation from the search engines for social spamming. Even if they detect a fake social account, they can't tie it back to the source. With link farms, the whole farm can be banned, which can shut down a SEO firm.
And for this you shall pay... *pinky to the mouth* ... ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Seriously, most of this lawsuits are not even "wristslapped", it's somewhere about "sternly talked to".
Yet it is not a problem for Google, because it violates the AdSense program policies, which are strictly enforced. This is an area where Adscend failed.
Adscend is hired as the advertising company, and their "affiliates" are basically subcontractors. How this would have actually played out in court is unknown. It would depend on the contractual agreements made between the "affiliates" and Adscend, particularly an indemnity clause, as well as Adscend's knowledge of the "likejacking", policies against it or other illegal advertising means, and enforcement of such policies.
"Defendants create and provide their affiliates with technology that is designed to deceive Facebook users into visiting websites that pay defendants for the referral traffic. Defendants encourage and pay their affiliates to create Facebook pages that are titled and designed to 'bait' users into visiting other websites,"
Adscend, hired to promote products, in turn does business with "affiliates" who create attention-getting marketing messages.
Adscend was spamming and getting paid by affiliates to spam on their behalf.
Sorry, this is not how it works with Adscend. You need to dig a little deeper than the paragraphs you quoted, since you misinterpreted them.
Adscend was not getting paid by affiliates. Adscend was getting paid by the companies that hired Adscend to do the advertising. In turn, Adscend employed the use of affiliates (subcontractors) to create advertisements and distribute links.
The "affiliates" posted the spam, which linked to their own affiliate web sites either running on the Adscend "content locking" web platform or using the Adscend APIs. The only way the visitor can unlock the content is by performing a predefined task, such as clicking a facebook "like" or providing personal information. The affiliates would create the likejacking buttons.
The money trail:
1) Visitors "like" a company's facebook page.
2) Said company pays Adscend for each "like" generated, as per their advertising agreement.
3) Adscend pays it's affiliate a fixed amount for each "like" generated, as per the affiliate agreement.
It seems like you're wrong. You and at least 3 people with mod points did not RTFA
Well, hopefully it was the "Admission of Liability & Disgorgment[sic] of Profits" statement that earned your +5 Informative.
I really only have six^H^Heven words for Washington AG: Admission of Liability & Disgorgment of Profits
FTFY
Sounds like a minor service charge in the cost of doing business. The Govt. seems to be acting like a mafia racket where they don't want to thwart this activity, they just want a slice of the pie.
"Idiots" buy triple A rated investment instruments, find out too late they were lied to, world economy crashes.
So when did legal fines turn into taxes on illegal operations.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Fuck off, bonch.
How much they've put out in political contributions to the right palms?
Fuck Facebook.
...that Facebook is already past its prime? I'm getting a serious AOL flashback every time I read something like this, that it's teenyboppers and grandmas who are affected, most other demographics have already moved on to Google+ and the like.
Like on Brewster's Millions, they spent $20 million in 20 days, but only rented everything. The scoundrels did some accounting after a last minute furniture deposit snafu and found the $100k. It was all the government could take!! Now for the real prize....the $200,000,000 windfall from Uncle Rupert!!
Admission of Liability & Disgorgment of Profits
It boils down to the simplest understanding of capitalism - if it's profitable, they'll do it.
A $100,000 fine on a $20,000,000 income is viewed as an expense more than anything else.
A $20,100,000 fine would stop this stuff dead cold.
Fines should seize any and all profits made while violating the law and add an additional penalty.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I'll sell mine for $1M.
To watch (constitution fucking facebook fascists and their stupid users) getting fucked by market exploitation terrorists, all under the corrupt eye of the domestic terrorists at the doj.
I expect next to hear about how baseball bat manufacturers get sued because their 24" bat won't fit up people they are fucking's ass.
Na, they wouldn't let that story get out.
Instead it will be spamming facebook is a felony next. Just watch.
Shit. I need to incorporate now, find something crazy illegal, do it well and set aside $100k for when I am found out.
They won't, because metamoderation doesn't work like that any more.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That might actually be the case if one of these cases ever reached sentencing, but since it was settled out of court, thats just an agreement between two parties and I doubt Adscend would accept such an agreement because it's basically the same as the sentence and then it would be better to take their chance in court.
The question is why did the the district atourney settle with Adscend for 100k? Was the governments case THAT flimsy?
If they made $20M and were found guilty of Doing It Wrong, shouldn't they have to pay $20M?