Facebook targets clickjacking operation in lawsuit

Facebook has filed a lawsuit against a company it has accused of scamming the social network's users by tricking them into unintentionally clicking the "like" button on the site.

The company is joining forces with the Washington State Attorney's office to file a suit which claims that Adscend Media has been operating a "like-jacking" scam in order to generate traffic for its clients.

According to the claim, Adscend tricked users into activating the Facebook "like" feature by requiring a click on the "like" button to view content or by hiding a button underneath another graphic.

Users are then taken to sites which ask for survey participation or subscription to premium services in order to view content.

By tricking users into activating the "like" feature, the pages could then be spread via the Facebook wall and news feed systems.

"We don't 'like' schemes that illegally trick Facebook users into giving up personal information or paying for unwanted subscription services through spam," said Washington State attorney general Rob McKenna.

"We applaud Facebook for devoting significant technical and legal resources to finding and stopping scams as soon as possible, and often before they even start."

Meanwhile, Adscend media has denied the claims. The company said in a posted statement that it would be conducting an internal investigation to find whether any of its affiliates had participating in clickjacking scams.

"If our investigation determines that any affiliate(s) engaged in this improper activity, Adscend will administer its long-standing company policy and immediately terminate the affiliate(s) responsible for these actions, as we have in the past when our internal mechanism has made such discoveries," the company said.

"Adscend Media does not tolerate affiliates that violate the law or Adscend's policies."

The case comes as Facebook looks set to finally file its initial public offering (IPO), which could value the firm as highly as $100bn.