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July 25, 2008

Fake Facebook profile author fined £22,000

Man posted fake information about friend

Carrie-Ann Skinner

A social networker who set up a fake Facebook profile and posted false information has been fined £22,000.

Mathew Firsht, managing director at Applause Store Productions, which finds audiences for TV shows such as Top Gear and the Big Brother evictions, sued former school friend Grant Raphael for libel and misuse of private information after he created a Facebook profile for Firsht containing fake information regarding his sexual and political preferences.

He also set up a further page relating to Applause Store Productions, entitled 'Has Mathew Firsht lied to you?'. The profiles were on Facebook for 16 days until they were taken down.

Raphel claimed the pages had been set up by gatecrashers at a party he had held, but judge Richard Parkes QC said the claims were "utterly far-fetched" and "built on lies". He ordered Raphel to pay Firsht £15,000 in damages and £2,000 for breach of privacy, as well as a further £5,000 to First’s company for libel.

"The significance of this case is that it shows that what you post is not harmless, but has consequences," said media lawyer, Jo Sanders, of Harbottle & Lewis.

"Sat at home or school or in the office, it's easy to think of social networking sites as harmless fun, that it's like chatting with friends, and that things posted there are either a joke or just a mischievous way of causing embarrassment. This ruling puts an end to that."

"The golden rule should be to only put up information or images you are happy for everyone to see and are happy to put your name to," she added.

Facebook said: "Fake profiles are an abuse of our terms of use and they will be removed. When fake profiles are reported we thoroughly investigate and remove profiles found to be in violations of our terms of use - just as we did in the case of Mathew Firscht."

See also: Facebook Connect gets first showing

Free whitepaper: Phishing for victims - Truth, myth and cybercrime

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Comments received


jamie said on Friday, 25 July 2008

ugh get over it why would someone do that out of spite when its obvious that its gonna be seen by the person whos facebook it is the guy who made the profile is obviously innocent!

jojo said on Friday, 25 July 2008

may be raphael was spilling some real secrets.... rofl

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