Facebook filed suit against three individuals that allegedly were involved in a phishing and spamming scheme that compromised a lot of Facebook accounts by sending unwanted wall posts and messages. They are accused of sending email to existing Facebook members with links that would take them to outside web sites. Once these links were clicked, the Facebook account was compromised and allowed them to access all the account’s contacts. The contacts were then sent wall posts and messages similar to the one the original account received. Each hit the outside link received was paid a commission. The two side are to meet in court in March.
One of the biggest fines handed down last year involved a compromise of Facebook that violated the CAN-SPAM Act. It will be interesting to see what happens with this case. Facebook wants to keep this type of action away from their site and their customers. Most of the messages revolved around marijuana, sexual enhancement, and sexual oriented material.
The success of Facebook in the recent years has opened many doors for problems like this to arise. Popular social networking sites sites are perfect targets for many hits like this. It is good to see that Facebook takes these actions seriously and does not want their user accounts compromised like they have been from these two incidents. Just about everyone I know is on Facebook, and I still see new faces every day. I could only imagine how many accounts were compromised, but the potential for foul play seems inevitable. With legal actions being quickly taken by groups like Facebook, hopefully further schemes will be deterred from happening.
