Spam News

Facebook spammers under restraining order

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Facebook last week obtained a temporary restraining order against three alleged cybercriminals who were engaging in a phishing and spamming scheme that compromised a number of Facebook accounts.

"They broke the law by sending unwanted messages and wall posts to people on Facebook, which in the United States violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the California Anti-Phishing Act and the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM)," Sam O'Rourke, a member of the Facebook legal team, said in a blog post. "Now, any contact these spammers have with you or anyone on Facebook could land them in jail."

Facebook sued the trio of Sanford Wallace, Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw for allegedly sending out emails to multiple Facebook members which included links to at least one malware website. The three were reportedly paid for each visit a Facebook member made to the outside sites.

The men are now banned from Facebook under the restraining order and cannot create accounts, contact any Facebook members, or retain any information from the social networking site.

In a similar attack in March and April 2008, Atlantic Blue Capital used Facebook login information obtained through phishing to send spam advertisements to Facebook users.