AOL Time Warner Inc. has filed five lawsuits accusing users of spamming its subscribers with junk e-mail, according to The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) online edition Tuesday.
The spammers have sent about 1 billion spam messages, generating about eight million individual complaints from users via AOL’s “spam report” feature.
Two individuals were named by AOL: Michael Levesque of Issaquah, Washington, and George Moore of Linthicum, Maryland. The other defendants are named as “John Doe” because AOL has not yet been able to identify them, the report said.
The lawsuits seek damages of more than US$10 million, plus an end to the messages.
AOL has also begun targeting spammers who use its Comcast Corp. and Road Runner residential broadband services. This may affect some legitimate users, who should contact their service provider for exemption if they find their messages being blocked, the WSJ said.