AOL Sues Five'Spam' Companies

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NEW YORK (AP) -- America Online has filed five federal lawsuits targeting spammers it accuses of sending some 1 billion junk e-mail messages promoting mortgages, steroids and pornography to its subscribers.

The case resulted from about 8 million individual spam complaints from subscribers, most of whom used a "Report Spam" feature AOL introduced last fall, the company said Tuesday.

The lawsuits, one filed Friday and the rest Monday in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., are the first anti-spam cases AOL launched since May 2001. They seek damages of more than $10 million plus an end to the messages.

Most of the defendants are "John Doe," meaning AOL could not determine their identities. However, filing the lawsuits gives AOL additional authority to subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers.

Individuals named in the lawsuits were Michael Levesque of Issaquah, Wash., and George A. Moore Jr. of Linthicum, Md. Their numbers were unlisted, and registration records for their domain names had false phone numbers.

Meanwhile, AOL has begun targeting spammers who use residential broadband services such as Comcast and Road Runner, which is also owned by AOL parent AOL Time Warner Inc.

FOXNews story

[alondra]

will wonders never end, last week I agreed with something the ACLU did and now , AOL. wow

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Good. A step in the right direction, may other ISP's follow suit...

--Jakk