According to the latest Facebook’s blog entry, Facebook has been awarded $873 million in damages in a ruling it had against marketing spammers that are Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital for sending sleazy messages to their users.
According to the court document embedded in below (PDF), the judge Jeremy Fogel has made this ruling on last Friday in San Jose federal court under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Furthermore, the ruling also barred the defendants from:
using or accessing, whether directly or indirectly, Facebook’s data, information, computers, computers systems, computer networks, or Facebook users’ accounts, information or profiles for any reason whatsoever;
accessing the physical property, structures or buildings of Facebook or Facebook’s employees;
creating, maintaining or using a Facebook account or profile; and many more.
The blog entry also discussed that it’s unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them, though Facebook will certainly collect everything they can. Nevertheless, the result of this lawsuit will have larger implications as this noting the willingness of Facebook to go to court and fight the spammers.
For some users, Facebook’s photo tagging is a new fun for them when they want to share their photos with their friends, and showed that the one who tagged also a friend in their inner circles. However, this has brought the issue of photo-tagging spam.
According to AdvertisingAge, the so-called photo-tagging feature has been used as a tool by guerilla marketers to make the photo appealing to the Facebook users. For example, if your friend has been tagged by someone, and it’s appealing enough for you to click the photo as appeared in the News Feed. After you clicking on the photos, it’s in fact relevant to some marketing promotions in support for a particular candidate or event.
Sam Lessin, the founder and CEO of Drop.io reported that photo uploading and sharing is central to Facebook’s overall service offerings. He said, “In Facebook, photos have several characteristics that make them especially fabulous marketing vehicles. First, people love them and tend to click on them all the time. Second, they get incredible real estate in news feed. Third, any message put into photos has a strange automatic relevance because it is attached to the name of a friend. Finally, there is a huge curiosity factor as to why a friend is tagged in an image.”
Now, before we, the Facebook users using the photo-tagging feature in order to outline additional details in a given photo, let us think that the guerilla marketers also will use this tactic to provide a link to a marketing promotion or a cause whenever your friends saw it in the News Feed of Facebook. This could be the biggest concern for this photo-tagging capabilities on Facebook at this moment.
I’ve read an article that talked about Facebook is about to have a big spam problem, and “it’s not surprising.” Of course, everyone love Facebook now, and no one should expect spam will not happened in the Facebook environment.
A common Web strategy I heard nowadays is: If you build it, they will come. “They” means not only the audience, it also means the spammers too. So, if you want your profile, or even the group (you are the Administrator) to be spam-free, be prepared to spend time in deleting spam posts, spam wall posts, and report users that spam you to Facebook when necessary.
This is a latest attempt of the attack on Facebook user; this time is not spam, but the notorious Nigerian 419 scammer on Facebook.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, a Facebook user, also worked at Google Australia Karina Wells has received a Facebook message from her friend Adrian that seeking help from Lagos, Nigeria. She has been told by the message that Adrian now is being stranded there in Nigeria and looking for a help and needed her to lend him $500 for a ticket home. However, Karina Wells is a smart lady, spotted that the message from the other party, was a scammer while chatting by using the word such as “cell phone” instead of “mobile phone.” Mind you, all the people from the Commonwealth countries speak and favor the British English as opposed to American English. She then gathered all the details of where the scammer was and forwarded them to both Facebook and the relevant authorities.
Now let’s go ahead and ask ourselves: How many “friends” do you have on Facebook? Enough is enough. And do you know where are they actually right now?
Secure Computing Corporation has compiled the Quarter 3, 2008 Internet Threats Report (PDF) containing statistical data and analysis covering both email and Web-based threats. Among the findings of the report, Q3 saw the emergence of the new malware targeting users of the popular social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
The worm misuses the functions of these popular sites by posting comments and sending messages like
• “Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street”,
• “OMG!!! This is you on hidden cam”,
• “You must see it!!! Funny video clip” or
• “Funny cartoon! I think its FAKE!! What do you think about this?”
to everyone on your contact list.
DO NOT click on any link in these messages if you come across the aforesaid.
