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Facebook Spam Social Networks The Courts Your Rights Online

Facebook, Washington State Sue Firm Over Clickjacking 71

Posted by timothy from the just-trying-to-earn-a-living dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "Facebook and the state of Washington are suing an ad network they accuse of encouraging people to spread spam through clickjacking schemes and other tactics. The company at the center of the allegations, Adscend Media, denies the charges and said it will fight them vigorously. According to the office of Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, the company paid and encouraged scammers to design Facebook pages to bait users into visiting Websites that pay the company. The bait pages would appear in posts that seem to originate from a person's Facebook friends and offer visitors an opportunity to view 'provocative' content in exchange for clicking the 'like' button on the Facebook page."
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Facebook, Washington State Sue Firm Over Clickjacking More

Facebook, Washington State Sue Firm Over Clickjacking

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  • Incentivized likes (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Saturday January 28, 2012 @09:19PM (#38853225) Homepage

    Facebook is designed to spread SHIT as a core feature; it's a spam machine.
    Are you really saying there is a distinction between good and evil "likes"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      dunno, is there a difference between email you receive from your friends and spam sent by spam-bots?

      of course there is - if there isn't, you're doing social networking wrong.

  • This requires dredging up the old movie quote, "What do you call it when assassins accuse the assassin?"

  • Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Saturday January 28, 2012 @10:19PM (#38853613)

    The irony is thick with this one.

    "Social Media" is basically designed to be click-bait. That's the only way they can recoup the investment money from the Venture Capitalists.

    Sure, they might all start out being about "connecting and sharing with your friends" but then they hit critical mass and have to make some money. So they turn into whoring advertising machines. No longer are you just following your friends, but you're suckered into following companies, so you can win tickets to a Lady Gaga concert.

    Now they complain about "clickjacking"?

    Fuck "social media", and fuck Slashdot for putting goddamned Facebook and Twitter links under every fucking post.

    • Re:Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by zippthorne ( 748122 ) on Saturday January 28, 2012 @10:59PM (#38853861) Journal

      The really shitty thing about Facebook is that it doesn't just affect the people who somehow got suckered into using it. It also affects everybody that uses the internet to do anything at all. Stupid [F] and Like buttons cluttering up every g'dang page out there with their third-party javascript includes and whatnot, slowing everything down.

      Which brings me to my secondary, related, rant - why is it that it's always the advertising taking too damn long to load that slows down pages while browsing? Shouldn't those bits be the fastest-loading parts of the page, since the advertising companies make their money by spitting out images and things to be viewed? If all I see is a box and an hourglass, I'm not going to know what stupid product I'm supposed to start buying....

      Oh, yeah, and the privacy thing, too. In fifteen years, we're not going to have D's and R's in congress any more, but not because things will have improved. Instead, we're going to have the whomever the hell Mark Zuckerberg feels like keeping drunk party pictures under wraps for party...

      • In fifteen years...we're going to have whomever the hell Mark Zuckerberg feels like keeping...

        In fifteen years, nobody will know who Mark Zuckerberg is. Sure, he'll be living comfortably in the same gated neighborhood as other affluent has-beens, but the economic lessons were already learned from MySpace. There's no Facebook IPO because every sane investor knows that Facebook is a house of cards.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fjandr ( 66656 )

          There are lots of not-so-sane investors (anyone investing in stocks other than large portfolio funds), and Facebook's IPO is expected next week.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JohnG ( 93975 )

        In fifteen years, we're not going to have D's and R's in congress any more, but not because things will have improved. Instead, we're going to have the whomever the hell Mark Zuckerberg feels like keeping drunk party pictures under wraps for party...

        Either that, or the next generation, having grown up around social media, will realize that everyone has drunken party pics or embarrassing costume party pics, or what have you and it will no longer be an issue.

        • Either that, or the next generation, having grown up around social media, will realize that everyone has drunken party pics or embarrassing costume party pics, or what have you and it will no longer be an issue.

          What makes you think this is new? Your parents, and probably your grandparents had embarrassing pictures of them. That doesn't stop people judging them.

          Just look at the "celebrity" media. People are eager to destroy supermodels who wear the wrong kind of bathing suit, or who have gained a couple of pounds. And the people who want to destroy them are the same people who look like fat slobs compared to the supermodel.

          This will never be a non-issue. Human hypocrisy knows no bounds. Facebook photos which would

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by JohnG ( 93975 )
            Scandalous photos aren't new, but social networks that make them a click away are. In order to see my grandparents drunken party photos, I would have had to sneak into their bedroom, rifle through their closet, and rummage through a stack of printed photos. As people's craziness becomes more and more exposed to the public eye, it will become more of a non-issue. If you don't believe me, go back in time and ask your grandparents how they feel about gays getting married, couples living together out of wedlock

            • Absolute bullshit. Just look at reality TV, the judgment just gets more and more trivial and insane. You can be a social pariah for wearing the wrong-colored dress, or for singing off-key.

              I'm not sure what world you're living in, if you think that the ubiquity of social media leads to less harsh judgment.

              If you don't believe me, go back in time and ask your grandparents how they feel about gays getting married, couples living together out of wedlock, or any other activity that was once never talked about and is now common place.

              I don't need to go back in time. I regularly speak to my 91-year-old grandmother, who is absolutely fine with all of that.

              You have a revisionist view of history. It's not like being gay or rebellious is a n

              • I'm not sure what world you're living in, if you think reality TV is any sort of a baseline for how normal society and people think/operate.

                • I'm not sure what world you're living in, if you think reality TV is any sort of a baseline for how normal society and people think/operate.

                  That's exactly how "normal" people think/operate.

                  It's the tyranny of minute differences. You don't need to be on reality TV to see that people routinely judge each other on the most superficial bullshit.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by JohnG ( 93975 )

                I don't need to go back in time. I regularly speak to my 91-year-old grandmother, who is absolutely fine with all of that.

                You have a revisionist view of history. It's not like being gay or rebellious is a new thing, our grandparents were once young and did these things, too.

                If you think that homosexuals were accepted as well 70 years ago as they are today then I am not the one with revisionist history. The key word in social media is media. In your grandparents day, that would have been radio and early television. I don't see a lot of openly gay characters on the Dick Van Dyke show or I Love Lucy. As society changed, they began to appear in media. The younger generation grew up with more exposure to it, so it wasn't as big of a deal. The new youth is going to grow up with diff

                • And if the majority of your acquaintances are running around shunning people because they wear the wrong color or sing off key, then it's your world that I question. Not mine. Does that sort of thing happen? Sure, I guess. But only among the infinitely small minded, and only on issues that don't really matter to anything, such as who is going to win the next episode of whatever flavor of the month reality show is on at the time.

                  In other words, it matters to a huge amount of people. More Americans care about reality TV shows and celebrity gossip than they do about government policy.

                  The younger generation grew up with more exposure to it, so it wasn't as big of a deal. The new youth is going to grow up with differing views of privacy than we had.

                  Exactly the same thing happened with "the youth" who grew up with the scandalous Television and Rock'n'Roll. Those people are in power now, yet not much has changed.

                  The "social media" is exactly like high-school cliques. You are kidding yourself if you think people who furthered their reputation via Facebook "friends" are going to be more egalitarian th

                • If you think that homosexuals were accepted as well 70 years ago as they are today then I am not the one with revisionist history. The key word in social media is media. In your grandparents day, that would have been radio and early television. I don't see a lot of openly gay characters on the Dick Van Dyke show or I Love Lucy.

                  I can't speak for America, but here in the UK, we had famous people like Noel Coward, and numerous actors who were quite obviously "queer as coots" to my grandparents. Some parts o

          • Are you freaking kidding me? Kim Kardashian had a sex tape get "leaked" and went from being a nobody to being worth over $50 million. Do you honestly think that scandalous pictures have the power to destroy someone's career now?

            • Are you freaking kidding me? Kim Kardashian had a sex tape get "leaked" and went from being a nobody to being worth over $50 million. Do you honestly think that scandalous pictures have the power to destroy someone's career now?

              Well, I guess if you want to have a career as a sex-object celebrity, and have millionaire celebrity parents supporting you, then that wouldn't hurt. But most people aren't in that position.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Just like when the 60's generation got into power and made the drug laws much more sensible since they knew that smoking a little weed was no big deal.

      • Which browser do you use? I use Firefox and I block Facebook's scripts (extension: NoScript) and cookies (extension: CookieMonster). And I have set up a separate profile to lurk and see my friends' posts which is the only one I use to check Facebook. I used to be a little permissive of Google, but now I have blocked them too. And run Google inside Chrome for the logged in uses (mail, reader and iGoogle mostly). So, no like or +1 buttons for me.

        • Safari + Adblock, Sometimes Firefox + NoScript, infrequently Chrome (vanilla) or Opera (also vanilla). I always seem to see the annoying graphic links polluting the screen-space, regardless of whether third-party javascript is actually allowed to run.

          But the gotcha is that only a small percentage of people actually use those tools. For everyone else, the web is pretty consistently a buggy, slow ad-fest. And also for the rest of us, when we turn off some of the tools to take a peek at what's going on out

    • fuck Slashdot for putting goddamned Facebook and Twitter links under every fucking post.

      There's links under posts?

      I also don't understand
      "As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable advertising. "
      Huh? There's advertising?

      Must be one of my extensions blocking the ability to turn on advertising so I can turn it off. Lets see - NoScript, FlashBlock, AdBlock Plus, GreaseMonkey (with my custom block APK Slashdot posts), FireBug. Bloody FireBug!

      • Re:Who Watches the Coastguard? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dangitman ( 862676 ) on Saturday January 28, 2012 @11:45PM (#38854089)

        Personally, I prefer to confront reality head-on. Hiding the bullshit just inoculates you to what's really happening.

        Where's the incentive to support sites that don't engage in shitty practices, if you can make the shitty sites seem better by hiding what they actually do?

        • Personally, I prefer to confront reality head-on. Hiding the bullshit just inoculates you to what's really happening.

          Where's the incentive to support sites that don't engage in shitty practices, if you can make the shitty sites seem better by hiding what they actually do?

          And yet, here you are, making the pay per view pay.

          Your logic makes no sense. How do you become "inoculated" to what you don't experience? (or even "desensitised") How would not participating in, or supporting a practise you don't agree with on Slashdot - have any bearing on whether you visit another site?

          The "Like" buttons are there so you'll click on them and raise the search ranking, the ads are pay per view - not pay per conversion. The rates paid by the ads are renegotiated according to traffic and se

          • Your logic makes no sense. How do you become "inoculated" to what you don't experience?

            The point is that I do experience it, so I know how shitty these sites are. If you don't experience it, you are inoculated, because you are getting a false impression of them.

            Slashdot has gone to shit, although the Facebook stuff is only one factor. I used to visit Slashdot nearly every day. Now I visit slashdot less than once per month. The social media rubbish isn't the only factor, but it is a significant one.

            If you're blocking all of that, then you continue to support Slashdot more than you should. If y

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      "goddamned Facebook and Twitter links" So Google gets a free pass?

      • "goddamned Facebook and Twitter links" So Google gets a free pass?

        No, Google+ can fuck off, too.

        The difference is that nobody takes Google+ seriously, and t's never going to be in the position of Twitter or Facebook. I just didn't think it worth mentioning the loser of the trinity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

          True, someone has a humerous flowchart posted outside their office near mine for posting social media updates, with questions like "Do you care if your parents see it?", "Do you care if your boss sees it?" (both lead to "Don't post it!" for 'yes')

          The very first question is "Do you want anyone to see it?", and to "No" line leads (after a twisty path) to Google+

    • ((Fuck "social media", and fuck Slashdot for putting goddamned Facebook and Twitter links under every fucking post.)) God dammit. As an invisible moderator, I was supposed to rate your comment. But I can't when you say things like that.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Using http://userstyles.org/ [userstyles.org] it is easy to get rid of.

        That only hides the symptoms. The problem is Slashdot doing it in the first place - it demonstrates subservience to those who wish to monopolise and profit from our lives.

  • So, what is the case for a state government being a proxy for a private interest like facebook? Why are tax dollars going to defend a corporation?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Probably because Washington state has anti-spam laws on the books, hence the people of Washington state (or ... at least the politicians in WA were paid to) believe that there is a public interest in attacking spammers. Thus... it is not defending a corporation nor is it in proxy for Facebook's interests. They are seperate actions and Adscend must defend themselves in both cases, rather than singly if Facebook and WA were cooperating on one suit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sosume ( 680416 )

        Since when is clickjacking a serious crime? Clicking on a mouse? For real? Lucky that there are no real problems for law enforcement to address. Oh wait..

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )

          well, frauding people that you're collecting money for cancer research isn't a serious crime either untill you do it to more than 10 people

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      well, they're not just defending a corporation but the users from fraud which the technique used here pretty much was.

  • Clickjacking is something that should be done in the privacy of your own home, not on Facebook for the world to see.

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