Facebook Sues “Justin Bieber Sex Tape” Fake Link Spammer

Fake links are nothing new on social media websites, but it is not every day you hear about the site going after the people who did it, then taking them to court over it. Most cases simply end up with the user account being banned like any other spam.

However, Facebook have filed court papers in the US against the allege Christopher Peter Targuini for the faked Facebook message that were sent on the social media website. The links promised to show you a sex tape of Justin Bieber and Salena Gomez and led you to a site that resulted in Mr Targuini getting paid for each hit, most likely through ad revenue.

The click would then hijack your page and auto post it to your Facebook friends, effectively spreading its self on the site as there are no doubt a fair few idiots who would actually click such a link.

In the legal complains, Facebook refers to Mr Targuini as a “recidivist” spammer, saying that he has been creating programs and messages for five years that are intended to scam or harm other users on Facebook. Despite warnings from Facebook that he was in violation of Facebook’s terms of service, Mr Tarquini continued his actions despite his accounts being banned.

Facebook wants him to banned from the site permanently and to be reimbursed for the cost of clearing up the mess he made on their website and of the costs of tracking him down. In short, the guy is pretty screwed.

It isn’t the first time Facebook has done this either. Last September Facebook got $3m from a spam company, and back in 2009 they got $711m after winning a lawsuit against spammer Sanford Wallace.

Thank you BBC for providing us with this information.