Spammers may want to steer clear of Facebook in the future.  Late yesterday, a representative of the social network's legal team announced that it was awarded $711 million in damages as a result of a case against Sanford "Spamford" Wallace.

As Sam O'Rourke explained on the Facebook Blog, Wallace is "one of the spammers who accessed people's accounts without their permission and sent phony Wall posts and messages."  And he's harassed folks in other ways over the years to the point that a 725-word Wikipedia article is tied to his name.

Now, a sort of downside of this development is that Wallace probably doesn't have $711 million to give Facebook.  He may try to get away without paying anything, in fact.

Still, O'Rourke wrote, "[W]e hope that this will act as a continued deterrent against these criminals.  Most notably, the judge referred Wallace to the U.S. Attorney's Office with a request that Wallace be prosecuted for criminal contempt, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time.  This is another important victory in our fight against spam.  We will continue to pursue damages against other spammers."

So if you're spammed on Facebook - and it's looking less likely that you will be - take comfort in the fact that the person responsible may get in quite a lot of trouble.

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