Facebook has filed lawsuits aimed at cracking down on a variety of
scams that have been running wild on the social-networking site in
recent months.
The lawsuits accuse two men, Steven Richter of Kings Park, New York, and
Jason Swan of Las Vegas, of attempting to trick Facebook users into
visiting Internet marketing websites. A Canadian affiliate marketing
company, MaxBounty, is named in a third lawsuit. All three were filed
Tuesday in federal court in San Jose, California.
The lawsuits target what's become a big problem for Facebook in the past
year: too-good-to-be-true offers that flood the social network, often
promoted by gullible users. Victims are typically told that they must
post the commercial message to their friends' Facebook pages to qualify
for US$1,000 gift cards or free iPads. The offers are ultimately either
fraudulent or involve signing up for expensive online services.
Facebook representatives couldn't immediately be reached for comment, but in a post to the Facebook Security group Wednesday
the company said, "the defendants, among other things, represented that
in order to qualify for certain fake or deceptive offers, people had to
spam their friends, sign up for automatic mobile phone subscription
services, or provide other information."
Swan created Web pages with fake Facebook "dislike buttons"
that redirected victims through "a series of unwanted commercial
websites that took the users' money and paid [Swan] for Internet
traffic," according to Facebook's lawsuit.
Richter is accused of making fake "Facebook Gold Account" pages that
offered users nifty features such as video chat with no advertising.
Victims who clicked on the links ended up on marketing websites,
Facebook said. Richter earned about $170,000 from one marketing company
by luring more than 388,000 Facebook users to these sites, Facebook
said.
Facebook has sued spammers in the past, but this time the company has also taken aim at an affiliate marketing company, MaxBounty.
Affiliate marketing companies pay members to generate Internet traffic
but are not the ones who directly entice visitors into clicking on links
and are not usually named in spam-related lawsuits.
But Facebook calls MaxBounty the "mastermind" of several spam schemes.
In court filings it says MaxBounty "encouraged its affiliates to carry
out these schemes by providing them with assurances that their
advertising methods were legitimate, by encouraging and coaching
affiliates on ways to increase the effectiveness of their Facebook
activities, and by providing technical support and substantial financial
gain to the affiliates who agreed to participate in the scheme."
MacBounty affiliates created Facebook Pages that advertised free gift
cards and iPads, but tricked victims into spamming their friends and
then redirected them to websites that collected personal information,
Facebook said.