AOL sues spammers, blocks accounts

The lawsuits, one filed on Friday and the rest on Monday in the US district court in Alexandria, Virginia, 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.

Individuals named in the lawsuits were Michael Levesque of Issaquah, Washington, and George A. Moore Jr. of Linthicum, Maryland. Their numbers were unlisted, and registration records for their domain names had false phone numbers. Most of the defendants are ‘John Doe,’ meaning AOL couldn’t immediately determine their identities. However, filing the lawsuits gives AOL additional authority to subpoena service providers and others to try to track down the spammers.

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

AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company worked with the broadband service providers to identify the ranges of Internet addresses that appear to generate the most spam.

Legitimate messages from subscribers who use alternate mail servers—for example, if they have their own domain name—may be blocked in the process. Graham said such users would receive a notice about the block and could try to get their service provider to exempt them.