American Facebook spammer fined $ 360.5 million

I don’t even know if the concept of “fine” is applicable to such a sum, but the fact remains that the US Federal Court appointed a huge fine of 360.5 million dollars to the Facebook spammer. Philip Porembski, that is the name of the hapless spammer, was accused of creating a large-scale spam mailing on this social network. In addition, he was accused of illegally obtaining private information of users, which was also obtained in ways that are clearly not in compliance with the law. The spammer had his own company PP Web Services (in principle, it still exists now, but this is unlikely to be for long). Apparently, Web Services brought income to the spammer, but the convict is unlikely to be able to pay even one hundredth of this amount.

By the way, Philip Porembsky received not so much user data - only 116,000 Facebook users received private information. I remember, not so long ago, the creators of the three most popular applications for this social network were accused of illegally obtaining personal information of a much larger number of Facebook users. The scandal ended with the tightening of Facebook rules, but nobody seemed to be fined.
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As for our spammer, the comrade managed to send out about 7.2 million spam messages, many of which contained links to phishing sites and sites that "treated" visitors with malicious software.

At the direction of the authorities, a large-scale search was conducted at the Web Services office, and the spammer’s house was also searched. As a result of the search, the data of another 160 thousand users who did not have time to go to work was discovered. Needless to say, the police also found spamming management software.

Apparently, the spammer worked completely too carelessly and arrogantly, because in the relatively short time Facebook office received more than 8 thousand complaints from users. In addition, several thousand users have either left Facebook or registered other accounts that have not yet been compromised by a spammer.

Needless to say, this trial is clearly indicative. By the way, what is being done in the USA with those who cannot pay the fine indicated by the court? The penalty is replaced with imprisonment or doing the same thing as in the case of MMM, when at the appearance of at least something of some value in the possession of the head of the company, this property is immediately described by bailiffs?

Via sophos.com