Facebook User's Virus Lawsuit Has Been Dropped

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» 25 May 2009

Facebook User's Virus Lawsuit Has Been Dropped

Theodore Karantsalis—a resident of Miami Springs, Florida who is a librarian, college teacher, activist, and Facebook user all at once—stated on Tuesday that he will drop the charges he filed against Facebook that alleges that the social networking site was unable to sufficiently protect its user base from a spreading virus threat.

The Florida resident was seeking $70.50 compensation from Facebook with his civil lawsuit that was submitted just a week ago in the Miami-Dade County court. He then spoke with Facebook's legal representatives recently and the case has been resolved afterwards. He adds that he will file a Notice of Dismissal on Wednesday.

The resolution of the case apparently involved adding each other as "friends" and "poking" each other periodically—Facebook speak of him and the social network coming into terms with the situation. Facebook will even be delivering Karantsalis a free T-shirt that the Floridian will wear in his profile picture. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt expressed that Facebook was "pleased" by the turn of events.

The lawsuit reportedly stated that Facebook breached an alleged "legal duty to exercise at least reasonable care with regard to the safety of its network" last May 14 when it was unable to halt the spread of a virus across its system. The librarian asserted that his account was infected and momentarily halted operations such that his photos and friends were lost and not restored.

Schnitt expressed that Facebook is quite interested to know how Karantsalis came up with the $70.50 figure of his lawsuit. They weren't going to pay him that amount of money, but they do assure "to refund all the money he paid to use Facebook." The spokesman subsequently said that Facebook is happy to know that they're very important to Karantsalis, but they're not sure what caused him to file the lawsuit in the first place since " his account was not disabled, is currently active, and he is using it".

Although Karantsalis has his account up and running as of this writing, he maintains that he had to re-add his friends and photos one-by-one. On that note, his friends were reportedly the ones who informed him that his account was compromised, discovering that his profile name has been changed to "John Doe" and his account was being used to send out spam that redirects people to a phishing site.

Karantsalis also answered Schnitt's unsaid question about the $70.50 figure, stating that he arrived at that amount by reckoning that his 250 friends were worth about 30 cents each.