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AOL Tries Again to Tackle Spam

ISP uses legal, technical weapons to combat unwanted e-mail.

Scarlet Pruitt, IDG News Service

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America Online said Tuesday that it has filed five separate lawsuits against alleged spammers as part of a broad antispam campaign that includes legal, legislative, and technological means.

The lawsuits, filed in the ISP's home state of Virginia, charge over a dozen companies and individuals with sending an estimated 1 billion spam messages to AOL members. The company said that the spam elicited over 8 million complaints from its members, many of whom utilized AOL's new Report Spam button on the latest version of its service.

The individuals named in the suits are Michael Levesque of Washington, and George Moore of Maryland. Many of the other defendants are listed as John Does of "unknown locations," since the company does not yet know who they are.

AOL is seeking civil penalties and monetary damages of at least $10 million under the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the Washington Commercial Electronic Mail Act.

Cracking Down

The move comes on the heels of a series of measures recently taken by the ISP in an effort to crack down on spam. In addition to supporting federal antispam legislation proposed last week, dubbed the "CAN-SPAM Act," the company has also employed technological measures.

An AOL spokesperson confirmed this week that the company has begun blocking mail servers identified with residential broadband IP addresses as part of its spam-fighting initiative.

"We've been working with a variety of broadband providers like AT&T Comcast and Road Runner to identify and block spammers using residential IP addresses," said AOL spokesperson Nicholas Graham.

Earnest Efforts

Graham said that AOL began working "in earnest" with broadband providers in late March after receiving complaints from AOL users about spam originating from the addresses.

In addition to working with Comcast and Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service, Graham said that a variety of broadband providers such as SBC Communications and British Telecommunications' BT Openworld are also collaborating.

While it is still unclear how users will react, Graham said that after working with Comcast and Road Runner to block these addresses, the amount of spam originating from the broadband providers dropped dramatically.

He added that other broadband players are proactively coming to AOL to identify blocks of dynamic residential IP addresses that are presumably operating outside of the contracts the users have with their providers.

"There is no doubt about it, this is a new front on the spam war," Graham said.

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