As it's turning out, the fight against spam might not be so futile after all. Edward Davidson, who became known as the 'spam king' by sending out millions of falsely labeled emails, found himself behind bars in April, and then more recently, the FTC shut down one of the largest organized spam rings in the world in HerbalKing.  And less than two weeks ago, the FTC scored another major win by shutting down a web host thought to be responsible for 75 percent of the world's spam. Now it's Facebook who's getting in on the fight.

Ruling on a case filed by Facebook against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital on August 14, 2008, Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel has awarded Facebook over $873 million in damages. Atlantis Blue Capital found itself under legal fire for allegedly accessing Facebook's servers, setting up phishing websites to acquire Facebook logins and email addresses, and sending out millions of emails to the social networking site's members.

"It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can)," Max Kely, Facebook's director of security, wrote in a blog post. "But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users."

The sentence, which is likely to knock Atlantis Blue Capital out of business, also forbids Geurbuez to access, retain, or use Facebook data in any way, nor is he allowed to create or maintain a Facebook profile.

We're not so naive to think that male enhancement, weight-loss, and prescription medication solicitations will stop infiltrating our inbox and filling up our spam queue, but perhaps after the Federal Trade Commission's latest bust they'll be a little less frequent. The FTC said on Tuesday it had shut down one of the largest global spam networks allegedly responsible for sending billions of unsolicited emails.

The FTC received some 3 million complaints in connection with spam tied to the HerbalKing operation, which is said to have operated in the United States, China, New Zealand, and other nations. According to the FTC, HerbalKing received $400,000 in Visa credit car charges in a single month, leading a U.S. District Court to freeze the various defendants' assets.

As is typical of spam rings, HerbalKing utilized botnets to mass-mail recipients. Mega-D, believed to be the group's largest botnet, was responsible for 35,000 zombie PCs capable of sending out a whopping 10 billion email solicitations per day. But the list of infractions goes well beyond violating the Can-Spam Act of 2003. The FTC accuses HerbalKing of unlawful operation of a pharmacy, making false claims regarding the safety of herbal products containing potentially harmful ingredients, selling medication without proof of a prescription, and more.

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