Facebook Files Clickjacking Lawsuit

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Facebook Files Clickjacking Lawsuit

engine

4:38 pm on Jan 27, 2012 (gmt 0)

Facebook Files Clickjacking Lawsuit [theregister.co.uk]

Facebook and US state of Washington have filed lawsuits against marketing firm Adscend Media over alleged clickjacking and spam practices, as the social networking giant finally gets tough with scammers operating on the site.

The lawsuits were filed against the co-owners of Delaware-based Adscend in the US District Court in Seattle (PDF) and a federal court in the Northern District of California. They allege violation of the CAN-SPAM Act which prohibits the sending of misleading electronic communications. Adscend was fingered for clickjacking and other scams which netted its owners up to $1.2m a month at their height.

Pfui

12:09 am on Jan 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

The State of Washington grabbed top billing in the headline from (my hometown) The Seattle Times newspaper's coverage:)

State, Facebook team up to sue over alleged 'click-jacking' scheme" [seattletimes.nwsource.com]

Fern

2:44 am on Jan 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

I hope facebook loses.

Adscend isn't doing the clickjacking, affiliates are. So let me get this straight, if I do these elaborate schemes to monetize users who fall for it, and I use Google Adsense as a means to monetize it, does that mean Facebook and Washington State will sue Google? SWEET!

Sgt_Kickaxe

6:49 pm on Jan 28, 2012 (gmt 0)

What Fern said, if these "government regulators" who are "getting tough" can't even tell the difference between the actions of a company and that of one of it's rogue affiliates who have broken tos... god help them in court.

Suggestion to these regulators, create a World of Warcraft account and you'll have 10 spam clickjacking emails from China per day, every day. Chase them instead.

Webwork

2:14 pm on Jan 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

You sue the parent company (who profited) and the parent company then joins/sues the "bad affiliates", who supposedly did the bad deed . . that the parent incentivized, monetized, authorized(?) and profited from. It's called "mandatory joinder of parties", i.e., everyone who made the conjob a profit centr. It also gets everyone who profited (affiliate program operator / affiliate) in the same room, to cough up their ill-gotten gains in a global settlement.

AFAIK, the Big G did get nailed for similar "dubious practices" (involving the marketing of meds) BUT it took a sting operation to gather the needed evidence of collusive thinking/behavior. (See the recent WebmasterWorld homepage thread regarding a $500,000,000 fine paid by G.)

So, don't get your pants all tied up in knots. Justice is slowing comeing to the WildWildWest . . or WWW for short.

fathom

8:28 pm on Jan 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

You sue the parent company (who profited)

ABSOLUTELY!

Your illegal activity requires others to do due diligence or suffered your fate.

rogerd

1:49 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

I can't count the number of times I've called a company out for spam posting on one of my sites and have them claim, "that wasn't us, it was an affiliate who got carried away."

The fact that affiliates are violating the firm's TOS doesn't exonerate the firm - anything beyond an isolated, very short incident means poor monitoring of affiliate behavior and lax enforcement of the TOS.

Yulia from DNP

2:12 pm on Jan 30, 2012 (gmt 0)

I agree, but affiliates who are not regulated by their own company is not a good idea either.: /i mean, if the company is not checking for spam and alerting affiliates for that.. well .. : /