Aug. 24, Monday- a Las Vegas man pleaded guilty to spamming more than 500,000 Facebook users after having access to their contacts in 2008 and 2009, according to prosecutors. The man, touted as Facebook's 'Spam King', is currently being tried in a San Francisco court. He has been charged with fraud and criminal contempt. He is facing a possible three-year sentence in prison.
A 47-year-old Sanford Wallace is the man behind the massive spamming. According to a Business Report article on the matter, Wallace pleaded guilty to sending over 27 million spam messages using Facebook's server. San Francisco attorney Melinda Haag said that Wallace has also violated a court order that does not allow him to access the social networking site.
As of the moment, Sanford Wallace has been released on bond. He will be sentenced later this year, on Dec 7, by District Judge Edward J. Davila. He will be imprisoned in San Jose and will also be fined $250,000 because of the fraud he committed under the Facebook name. Wallace's lawyer has not commented as of this writing regarding his client's plea. Facebook has not commented on Wallace's case.
The massive Facebook spam in 2008 involved spammers sending messages directly to their victims' Facebook walls, which is now called Timeline. The senders are disguised as friends of the victims and an example of the spam is the propagating of supposed promotional posts. An alleged friend, the spammer in disguise, posts promotions of a drug that enhances sex drive.
Users whose walls were not set on private mode at that time were especially susceptible to the spam. At one point, spammers in the social networking site had been reported to be working with malware creators. The dangerous collaboration has stolen information from their victims. Of course, the spam was not spread using only one account. The suspects were said to have used a program that allows them to make multiple accounts on the social networking site simply by running it.
The 27 million spam messages that Wallace pleaded guilty for sending were highly suspected to be the work of an automated script. The nuisance posts were said to be far worse than email spam, said a Sophos post regarding the matter. The user's online community will be able to see those posts. In email spamming, only the user gets to see them.
