TORONTO - A Canadian company specializing in Internet porn is being sued by Facebook amid allegations it hacked the popular social networking website's computers and tried to access the personal information of users, court documents show.
A numbered Ontario company, which does business online under the name SlickCash, along with several people in the Toronto area, are named in an amended complaint filed by Facebook in San Jose, Calif.
The hugely popular information sharing website alleges that, for two weeks last June, the defendants attempted to access Facebook's servers at least 200,000 times.
"Each of these requests sought to direct Facebook's computers to send information on other Facebook users back to (the company's Internet Protocol) address,'' the court documents say.
"These requests for information from Facebook generated error messages and were detected as unauthorized attempts to access and harvest proprietary information.''
It wasn't clear from the documents what information was accessed, but the complaint alleges "the defendants knowingly and without permission took, copied, or made use of, data from Facebook's proprietary computers and computer network.''
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.
The lawsuit names Istra Holdings Inc., the numbered company affiliated with SlickCash, and defendants Brian Fabian and Josh Raskin as either "residing or working'' at the same Toronto address.
The complaint contains allegations that have not been proven in court. Calls to Istra Holdings were not immediately returned, and it was not immediately clear whether any of the defendants had filed a statement of defence.
The SlickCash website boasts that its partners have been "involved in every facet of the online adult industry'' since 1999.
The suit also names Ming Wu and six other defendants whose identities remain unknown.
The amended complaint was filed last Wednesday after Facebook was granted court orders in Canada forcing Internet service providers Rogers Communications and Look Communications to divulge subscriber information.
Both companies were asked to hand over the information voluntarily, but refused, the suit said.
"We have a policy that we do not turn over customer information without a valid court order,'' said Rogers spokeswoman Taanta Gupta.
"Those are the steps to balance privacy with the requirements of the law.''
After the first IP address that tried to hack its severs was blocked, other addresses began trying to gain access, the complaint alleges.
The suit alleges Facebook has suffered damages in "excess of $5,000'' and has been "irreparably harmed.''
The "extent and amount of such injury and damage will be demonstrated at trial,'' the complaint says.
