Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

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And high judges agree.

Facebook claimed[0] that emails it sent to its users were misleading, partly, because Facebook inserted "Thanks,\nThe Facebook Team" into messages it sent out as a result of Power.com's actions.

Facebook claimed[0],

    64.    The message, drafted by Power.com, is signed by "The Facebook Team", which is both misleading and false.

If the findings [1] of the higher judges are correct, then it appears that Facebook previously argued that it constructed false evidence against Power.com -- and used it in a legal attack that destroyed Vachani's life.

[0] http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/technology/2009010...

[1] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/12/1...

The message is at page 10 of the PDF on link[0] above, page 12 of the complaint. (pdf and complaint page numbers don't match up)

It's clear to me that this was a spam/phishing message.

1. Comes from @facebookmail.com

2. Signed "The Facebook Team"

3. Includes only links to facebook.

4. In the footer, "Want to control which messages you receive from facebook..." facebook link.

--- Now, they obviously created a facebook event as a promotion and invited people on facebook to that event in order to generate those messages, so there is a bit of a grey area, but it's clearly a power.com email and there's no message of power.com other than:

Event: Bring 100 Friends and win 100 bucks

What: Reunion

Host: Power

Start Time: date

End Time: date

Where: Power

--- It's an unethical use of Facebook's systems at the very least, and spells out a pretty big hole (hopefully filled by now) that opens facebook users up to scams because the originator is obfuscated.

The message was determined not to be spam, but regardless, Facebook constructed and sent that message.

As far as I can tell from these documents, Power setup a Facebook event, then Facebook added it's own text (eg. "The Facebook Team") to the event message and sent it as an email to its own users. Then, Facebook took down Vachani based on those emails.

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