Facebook Spammer Owes Big

No doubt the folks at Facebook are sporting big smiles today, as the penalty for “Facebook spammer” Adam Guerbuez was announced. The number he’ll have to pay to the giant social-media company? $875 million dollars! Now, it’s unlikely that the spammer will ever be able to make such a large payment, but the judgement does send a strong message to would-be spammers that the consequences of online spam can be real, and very large. Also, no real surprise, but Adam Guerbuez has been hard to find since the time the lawsuit was filed.

Facebook had claimed that the spammer had tricked their users into handing over their user names and passwords to him, by the means of “spoof” or “phishing” websites. After gaining access to his victims’ Facebook accounts, he would then use them to advertise a large variety of products — you know, the unsavoury kind of products you’d receive in a spam email.