Facebook have been awarded £430 million in damages after winning their case against Sanford Wallace who is nicknamed, the Spam King.
The case centred on an allegation made by Facebook which claimed that Mr Wallace had been sending huge numbers of unsolicited emails from Facebook user’s accounts after gaining access to the accounts without permission. The emails which were sent would invite the recipient to click onto another site, Wallace was paid for every hit that site received.
The court in California heard that Facebook estimated that Wallace had committed at least 14 million violations which come under the offence of spamming.
District judge Jeremy Fogell said in his ruling that Wallace had shown “blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook users.” A spokesperson later added that he could face a possible jail sentence for his crime as well.
Wallace, along with his partner Walter Rines, was successfully sued by MySpace back in 2008 after they were found to have bombarded their members with spam.
Although Facebook say they don’t expect to recover the full amount of damages, they hope that the verdict will go some way to acting as a deterrent to any would-be spammers who are considering targeting Facebook.
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