"MONTREAL - Spammers of the world, beware.Winnipeg Free Press - Spammers of the world, beware; court orders Quebecer to pay Facebook $1 billion
A Montreal man has been ordered to pay Facebook $1 billion after allegedly spamming its members with a variety of messages including penis-enlargement ads.
Quebec Superior Court upheld a ruling by a U.S. court that Adam Guerbuez owed the money for allegedly flooding people's Facebook pages with more than 4 million messages.
The case is touted as a potential precedent-setter — with some calling it the largest such penalty, by far, in Canadian legal history.
But Facebook shouldn't hold its breath waiting for the money. Guerbuez says he's legally broke and therefore not compelled to give anything to the social-networking giant."
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"Facebook is trying to stop spammers with something new, disabling clickable links posted in news feed comments.Examiner.com - Facebook Desperately Trying To Stop Spammers
This a dramatic step they are taking in their battle against spammers. What they have done is make all external website links non clickable in an effort to cut done on spammers and hackers. So now when someone tries to comment on one of your posts and put a link to lets say Google.com that link will now come up in black."
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""If you think parasites and other simple life-forms can't thrive in the most basic of media, you haven't looked in my compost pail lately. So leave it to spammers to find the fresh fuel from social networks to ply their junky trade.Internet Evolution - Forget Email... Social's the New Spam Vector
One spammer found a loophole in Facebook's photo uploading system and used it to post thousands of Wall messages, most of which promised free iPhones. Thousands of profiles got hit before the company removed the spammy content; Facebook claims no accounts were compromised as a result of the glitch.
There's also a scam going with a fake Facebook Dislike button, which drives unsuspecting users to revenue-generating online surveys, again promising free iPhones or iPads."
"On a statistical basis, this shift in spammer strategy from email to social networking sites tracks perfectly with users' online behavior: Facebook traffic is closing on, and poised to surpass, email volumes and shows no signs of slowing down."
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Wow, do I ever hate spammers.
As a guy whose email account has been around since about 1992, I get around 1000 spam a day to my email account. My spam filters take care of a good deal of it, but I still end up having to delete a lot of spam (at least one hundred a day) from my mailbox.
I am having to invest in more filtering software.
That costs me money. Personally. Right out of my pocket.
Spammers, by spamming, steal from me and make my life miserable. They constantly probe my systems trying to get past all my security so that they can misuse my servers to send their spam. That takes work and monitoring. It's like having someone who is constantly trying to break into your house. It is stressful and upsetting. I'm a computer guy and I take the condition of my servers in the same kind of psychic zone as my pets' health.
My friends have gone as far as to change their email addresses so as to lose the spam they get. I refuse to take that step to date. But there are times I consider it. But I'm stubborn enough to try to stick it out. I don't want the spammers to win.
The $1 Billion award above is an awesome first step. I personally favour the method used by the IRA to deal with people who stepped out of line - it's a practice known as knee-capping. That's where the shoot you in the knee-cap to cause permanent injury in order to punish someone. I suspect that Amnesty International might review my membership (if it is still active... have to check on that...) if they ever read this (even though I suspect that in private moments they might have the same base desire).
Spamming
Yeah
Sorry about the rant
Down with spammers!
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