Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites on the Internet. It and rival MySpace account for a good portion of the social networking user base online. Many users of Facebook and MySpace are well aware of the levels of spam that can come through their user accounts.

Facebook recently filed a lawsuit against ten unknown individuals and ten unknown companies. Known individuals in the lawsuit include Brian Fabian, Josh Raskin, Ming Wu, Istra Holdings, Inc, Slickcash.com and 1564476 Ontario Limited.

According to Information Week, Facebook alleges that between June 1, 2007 and June 15, 2007 the defendants tried to access information on users of Facebook using an automated script over 200,000 times.

Facebook claims that the information harvesting attacks cost it more than $5,000 USD. Filings for the suit show that email addresses, user names, passwords, and network affiliations were a part of the stolen information.

A Facebook spokesperson told Information Week via email, “We do not have any details to share at this time, and we do not comment on pending litigation.”

Facebook has been in the news most recently with its partial sale in October of 2007 to software giant Microsoft who purchased a minority stake in Facebook for $240 million USD. Earlier this month Facebook was in hot water with users over its Beacon adware program designed to monitor shopping of Facebook users on advertisers websites.