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The ruling by US district court Judge Jeremy Fogel, found that Adam Guerbuez used phishing techniques to illegally obtain login details to Facebook profiles.

He then used these profiles to send four million spam messages to Facebook users advertising drugs and male enhancement pills. Guerbuez failed to show for the hearing, and has had an injunction filed against him preventing him from using Facebook in the future.

The ruling is the highest

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ever awarded under the US's CAN-SPAM Act, created specifically to fight spammers such as Guerbuez. However, Facebook is realistic about its chances of collecting its winnings.

"Does Facebook expect to quickly collect $873 million and share the proceeds in some way with our users? Alas, no," says Max Kelly, Facebook's director of security on his blog.

"It's unlikely that Geurbez and Atlantis Blue Capital could ever honor the judgment rendered against them (though we will certainly collect everything we can). But we are confident that this award represents a powerful deterrent to anyone and everyone who would seek to abuse Facebook and its users."

The ruling follows the $234 million awarded to MySpace against notorious spammer Sanford Wallace