According to a decision of the US District Court of North Carolina, Canadian citizen Adam Guerbuez has to pay the astonishing fine of $873 million for sending more than 4 million spam messages to social networking Web site Facebook. The judgement represents the biggest one ever given for a violation of the federal CAN-SPAM Act.

The method used by Guerbuez and his company Atlantic Blue Capital, was to trick the site’s users into giving him the login details and used their profiles to send a massive amount of spam advertisments for male enhancement drugs, other sexually oriented materials and marijuana to Facebook’s users. Even though the messages appeared to be sent by the user’s friends, they were actually transmitted from Guerbuez’s autobots.

The trial began in August, with Facebook’s officials stating in the initial complaint that "The voluminous and illicit nature of defendants' advertisements has tainted the Facebook experience for affected Facebook users."

Judge Jeremy Fogel considered appropriate about $437 million for statutory damages and $437 million for aggravated statutory damages, but did not say how the money will be gathered. It is uncertain if Guerbuez is actually worth the huge amount and some say that Facebook will not even get 10 percent of the fine. Still, the court’s decision comes in a time when Internet spam is at an all-times high and the plan is to discourage such actions for the future by setting an example. Finding out that they might have to pay such a figure, I’m not sure who would ever consider sending spam messages.

Guerbuez will also have to pay for attorneys' fees and costs, and the figures should be released no later than December 12, according to the court’s decision. In addition, he is forbiden from ever accessing the social networking Web site or from asking others to do it for him.

"Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no. It's unlikely that Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them - though we will certainly collect everything we can," Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security, wrote in a blog post two days ago. "But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users," he added.

The CAN-SPAM Act, went into effect in 2004 and requires businesses to identify unsolicited e-mail as an advertisement and include contact information in the body of the e-mail so that consumers be allowed to opt-out of receiving future messages.

"We've all experienced spam -- those unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages," said Facebook director of security Max Kelly and deputy general counsel Mark Howitson in an recent e-mailed statement. "The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook's users have been among those targeted. We don't take this affront to our users lying down."