Facebook awarded $873 million in spam case | Security - CNET News - 0 views
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Li-Ling Gan on 19 Aug 09Description of case: The issue being put across in this case is Spamming. In summary, a Canadian man was accused of sending Spam messages to its members through Facebook, using this to earn money for his company. Facebook then took action and sued them under the Can-Spam (Contolling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act, and was awarded $873 million in damages for winning this case. Ethical question: I think the most important question here is to what extent is it considered unethical to send messages to people who might not want such information. In the case of Facebook, should there be a line drawn between sending such 'Spam' messages to people you do not know, and people who are already on your 'Friends' list or in the same online community? Ethical problem: I feel the problem of wastage surfaces with Spamming. Resources are being used up to keep the internet working and these are in turn wasted when people receieve unwanted mail or messages that they end up deleting. Furthermore, there is a large amount of Spam received that are also scams, this then touches on the problem of fraud and cheating other users for the sender's benefit.