Sanford Wallace: Facebook Wins $711 Million In Case Against 'Spam King'

LOS ANGELES — Facebook said Thursday a California court has awarded the social networking Web site $711 million in damages in an anti-spam case against Internet marketer Sanford Wallace.

Facebook sued Wallace for accessing users' accounts without their permission and sending phony posts and messages. The company said on its blog that in addition to the damage award, the San Jose, Calif., court referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's office for prosecution for criminal contempt of court – meaning he could face jail time.

Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s.

In May 2008, the online hangout MySpace won a $230 million judgment over junk messages sent to its members when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled against Wallace and his partner, Walter Rines, in another case brought under the federal anti-spam law known as CAN-SPAM. In 2006, Wallace was fined $4 million after the Federal Trade Commission accused him of running an operation that infected computers with software that caused flurries of pop-up ads, known as "spyware."

"While we don't expect to receive the vast majority of the award, we hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals," said Sam O'Rourke, associate general counsel for Facebook, in a blog posting Thursday. "This is another important victory in our fight against spam."

There was no phone number listed for Wallace in Las Vegas, where he is believed to be living, according to the ruling.

The company said the judgment marks the second-largest anti-spam award ever. In November 2008, Facebook won an $873 million judgment against Adam Guerbuez and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital, who bombarded users with sexually explicit spam messages.

Comments

[eyepatch]

This article is factually incorrect!­!!!!!!!!!!­!!!

Pop-ups are one thing but spyware is an entirely different thing!

Pop-ups are extra windows that open up without your permission
often from companies that are advertising products and services
or that are soliciting opinions etc....

Whereas "spyware" is a marketing tool that tracks where you go
on the internet and sends this information back to data mining software
and marketers. Typically "spyware" is responsible for the banner ads
on particularr sites like this one and for the most part is benign until the
amount of spyware starts to cause system degradation which will
slow your computer down to point to whereas the performance of your
computer is affected.......

Please don't loop these to very different type of internet phenomenons up
one "spyware" is almost like a virus whereas software such as "pop-up blockers"
can disable pop-ups all together!!!!!!!!

[PhineasGage730]

As is said in 80's movies: NNNNNEEEEEERRRRRD!

[Diogenes08]

Just as we should be free to access all points of the net, and all as fast as any other, so should we be free of any programs being loaded on private computers without express permission. I don't care who says they are benign, they are still unwanted and an invasion of privacy. Lump them together with viruses as far as I'm concerned, and marketing be damn;d

[GrumpyOldGeek]

Odds are just about zero that anyone wants to spy on you. They really don't care about you that much. Sorry to crush your ego. There is big money to be made by collecting valid email addresses and selling them to others. The primary purpose of spam is to get you to reply. That way, they know there's a person at a real computer. They'll follow up. Eventually a few people cave in.

Most trolling is much more subtle. Here's some common techniques:

See those 'send to a friend' buttons? You just gave someone a valid email address. Need to sign on and furnish a password? Most people use the same password everywhere. You just gave up enough info for someone to sign on to your computer. Did your teenager set up a web site? If there's a tag in it, thousands will have that email address within minutes. Don't know what that is? Well, neither do many web site designers.

No spyware or virus scanners will stop you from doing these things.

Computer running slow? My brother-in-law is a classic case. He has 7 (count 'em, 7) different virus/spyware packages. His computer takes nearly an hour to start up. Gaaaak.

The selective banner ads might be Google or Yahoo searches plus items you read here on HuffPo. This is perfectly legitimate and harmless. In fact, it tends to improve your odds of finding things that interest you. These ethical sites don't sell your email addresses.

[screengoddess]

at least they have a revenue stream now

[jsgaetano]

Gotta hand it to Facebook.

If other companies would have taken on spammers as aggressively as Facebook does, we wouldn't be having the trouble with it we are today.

[seedoubleyou]

Go Facebook go!! (And I hope they keep their lawyers on that guy's @ss!)

[blukazoo]

They should lock him up for years hide each piece of mail he receives in a pile of 10,000 circulars. A-hole.

[DG3]

lol.

[kndam72]

these figures are meaningless since they will never be paid out.

It is simply more of a sensationalist statement than anything else.

Proper and Real damages should be awarded not pie in the sky figures to make prosecutors and judges look boastful. I'm sure all involved will be running for some kind of office soon using ths case as their prop.

[PhineasGage730]

Umm, the story makes that clear...so shut it.

[kndam72]

and your point being???

stop trolling

[GwenWare]

Jail time for Jerks!

[x27]

AVG free is great free security

[Imzadi]

Co-sign!

[filo]

I have seen a number of things gdet past AVG. There is a fake anti-virus program that gets past it. This FAKAV has dozens of variations and locks up your PC until you pay them $49.99 on a credit card, which is what they are really after. They did a good job of making it look real, It is sometimes yellow to look like Norton AV and they use icons from Microsoft. I know this because I get paid to take it out of PCs.

[kndam72]

AVAST for me, no problems since

[marcain]

Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard classmates claim he stole the idea for Facebook and filed a lawsuit a few years ago. He was working with them on their site and they said he disappeared later to appear with his site Faceboook using the same interface they claim he stole. It was later dismissed in court. But money and power control the court system so who knows what is true. At the time, I believed the classmates who filed the lawsuit when the story first appeared a few years ago.

[hellostats]

From the details of the case, it seems pretty obvious that Mark Zuckerberg did, in fact, steal their idea. However, I believe they settled out of court, so the real inventors of FB did end up getting their millions.

[marcain]

I hope they were compensated that way or I would forever see Zuckerberg as a do_uchebag.

[phredralf]

Facebook should distribute that money between all of the users who were spammed. Why do they get to keep the money? Although I doubt that money will never be collected. Hundreds of millions in compensation and no jail time? People are going to jail for $20 worth of weed, something is skewed here.

[SusanStoHelit]

Facebook is the main one that was injured. We lost an instant of time with stupid spam - Facebook had to pay for servers, outages, lost income, etc.

[Romeover]

If you add up the time lost by all the users who even glanced at the spam, it might be more than Facebook lost.

[phredralf]

It's Facebook's job to take responsibility over their content and take the hit when their system fails. I'm not too worried that Facebook suffered immensely with this and in fairness, share the wealth with those who had to eat all those spam sandwiches.

[Ellyllon]

Ok, so is that his picture? Because I want a face for all the hate I have to bestow upon him, as the Face of Spam.

[NoElephants]

That's Zuckerberg, you think the "Spam King" would be invited to speak at the World Economic Forum? (Look at the background of the picture)

[01202009]

He's too busy counseling Joe Lieberman. it's a 24/7 job!

[Soundofthunder]

Yes, but does he have the money, and I hope they find a good home for all that spam, spam, spam, spam....

S

[Mannock]

...lovely spam, beautiful spam, spam, spam, spam...

[JustSomeGuyWhoPaints]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anwy2MPT5RE

[rockgolf]

Bloody vikings.

[GetoffMylawn]

I hope he finds a giant spam packet up his scsi port in jail.

[ojim]

Yes!

[zombywulf]

I have a "pointy stick" you can get the 16 ton weight and we'll Pythonize the criminal.