In an order issued Monday morning, Fogel wrote that the social networking site presented enough evidence to show that it's likely to succeed on claims that Wallace and the others were spamming Facebook members. "In addition," Fogel wrote, "the possibility of irreparable injury exists with respect to both Facebook's reputation and the personal privacy of Facebook users." The order prohibits Wallace and the other defendants from accessing Facebook, sending unsolicited messages to members and other related activity.

Facebook sued Wallace and two other individuals--Adam Arzoomanian and Scott Shaw--last week, alleging that they systematically created Facebook accounts, tricked members into providing their passwords, and then impersonated them to send messages to their friends. Facebook alleged that this activity violated the federal CAN-SPAM Act as well as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Anti-Phishing Act.

Facebook alleged that its "economic damages continue to mount" because it was "forced to implement new methods and techniques in an effort to identify and block defendants' ever-changing tactics."

Fogel wrote in his order that the alleged spam enterprise, which began in November, has become harder for Facebook to contain. "While Facebook has been reasonably successful in combating this scheme, the expanding scope of the operation has made it increasingly difficult to neutralize defendants' activities," Fogel wrote.

Wallace has a long history as a spammer as well as an adware distributor. He became known as the "Spam King" in 1997, when he ran the email marketing company Cyber Promotions. More recently, a judge ordered him to pay more than $4 million for installing ad-serving programs on consumers' computers without obtaining their consent.

Last year, a federal court in Los Angeles ordered Wallace and another individual to pay MySpace $230 million for sending members unsolicited messages that appeared to have come from their friends.

But there are questions about whether the federal anti-spam law applies to messages posted to a social networking site, as opposed to those sent to an email address. The CAN-SPAM statute applies specifically to unsolicited messages sent to email addresses.

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