Facebook Sues Porn Company for Hacking
Suit: Company used servers to request users’ personal data.
By: Bianca Fox
Posted: 12/17/2007
SAN
JOSE, Calif. - Facebook is suing Canadian
Internet-porn company Istra Holdings, which controls SlickCash, and 17 individuals for
allegedly trying to collect personal information about the social-networking
site's users.
Facebook alleges that in June, the
defendants' servers used automated scripts to make more than 200,000 requests
for personal information stored on its site. The company said the automated
scripts caused error messages to be generated, but did not state whether user
information was successfully collected.
Facebook first filed suit in June, but
amended the complaint earlier this month after obtaining court orders to
identify who controlled the servers trying to access its site. The suit was
filed in the U.S. District Court in San
Jose, Calif.
Facebook has requested a jury trial and is
seeking to bar the defendants from accessing its computer systems in the
future, in addition to damages. The company said it cost at least $5,000 to
investigate the hacking attempts.
The suit also names Brian Fabian and Josh
Raskin as Toronto-based Istra employees and Ming Wu of Markham, Ontario,
and 14 unidentified people.
SlickCash is an affiliate advertising
business that offers commissions to Web publishers for referring Internet
surfers to its portfolio of adult sites.
SlickCash representatives were unable to
comment at the time of story.
