TORONTO - A Canadian Internet porn company has agreed to pay Facebook half a million dollars after it allegedly hacked the popular social networking website's computers.
The lawsuit against the numbered Ontario company, which does business online under the name SlickCash, has been settled in a U.S. court. In addition to the $500,000 payout, SlickCash and several people associated with the site also agreed not to become members of Facebook for 10 years.
They also agreed not to contact any members of Facebook using personal information allegedly gleaned from the website's servers.
The lawsuit, which was filed in San Jose, Calif., alleged the Ontario company tried to access the personal information of Facebook users.
The SlickCash website boasts that its partners have been "involved in every facet of the online adult industry" since 1999.
According to court documents recently entered into an online legal database, the suit was settled in April.
The hugely popular information sharing website alleged that, for two weeks in June 2007, the defendants attempted to access Facebook's servers at least 200,000 times.
It alleged it was an attempt to gain unauthorized access to Facebook's friend-finder functionality.
Facebook, with an estimated 34 million users worldwide, allows members to post photos alongside personal information like a birth date, hometown, e-mail address, phone number, and workplace.
