Web Security News

'Spam king' facing criminal charges for violating Facebook restraining order

Monday, June 15, 2009

A lawsuit by Facebook against the self-proclaimed "spam king," Sanford Wallace, has been referred to federal prosecutors for possible criminal charges for violation of a restraining order.

Wallace was ordered not to access Facebook as part of a civil suit seeking damages for his alleged involvement in phishing attacks on the 200 million-member social networking site.

A California district court judge ordered the case to be referred to the U.S. attorney Friday during a hearing on a Facebook motion that Wallace be found in criminal contempt for allegedly continuing to send spam on the site, CNET News reported.

"We're very pleased Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed that there were grounds for criminal contempt and that the U.S. attorney's office should investigate Wallace," Facebook told CNET in an email. "Wallace filed for bankruptcy, which is not unexpected and only delays our judgment temporarily. We will continue to pursue the judgment and will be reviewing his filing very closely."

Facebook sued Wallace and two others in February claiming they violated the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM) and won a restraining order in March banning them from the site.

Sam O'Rourke, a member of the Facebook legal team, said in a blog post at the time that "any contact these spammers have with you or anyone on Facebook could land them in jail."
ADNFCR-1765-ID-19219232-ADNFCR

Related News:

Mac OS X malware game Lose-Lose deletes files - 11.5.2009
A graduate student has written a game for Mac OS X that resembles the classic video game Space Invaders, but Mac users should not download the game if they don't want to have it randomly delete files.

Adobe issues critical security update for Shockwave Player - 11.5.2009
Adobe Systems yesterday released a critical update for all versions of Shockwave Player and recommends that users upgrade to version 11.5.2.602 to protect against cyber attacks exploiting the vulnerability.

Microsoft Security Essentials detects malware that kills Windows XP - 11.5.2009
A new Trojan malware detected by Microsoft Security Essentials as Win32/Daonol steals credential information and redirects web traffic, Microsoft said on its malware protection blog.

FBI warns of malware targeting corporate bank accounts - 11.4.2009
A new report from the FBI cyber crime division said hackers have attempted theft of $100 million from online bank accounts, using sophisticated malware that steals bank account passwords.

Microsoft issues Internet Explorer security update - 11.3.2009
Microsoft on Monday issued a security bulletin that updates a previous patch for Internet Explorer to resolve two issues. The IE bug only affects users who already applied the earlier patch.

View Related Resources
Or
Watch an Online Demo
Or
Have us call you now