Man fined over $1 billion for sending Facebook spam

Over a two month period, Adam Guerbuez sent more than four million spam messages to Facebook profiles, promoting marijuana and sexual enhancement drugs.

For every one of the 4,366,386 spam posts Montreal-based Guerbuez made during March and April 2008, he has been fined US $100, which – after an additional US $100 in punitive damages and exchange rate conversions – comes to a staggering CDN $1 billion fine.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Lise Fournier was damning of Guerbuez’s activities, writing:

“Facebook had never been targeted by as much spam and the method used was particularly efficient given that the spam appeared to be coming from users’ friends.”

Adam Guerbuez first found himself in hot water two years ago when a US district court in San Jose, California, fined him US $873.3 million for breaking American anti-spam laws. The new…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.