Company Sues Spammers in Series of Lawsuits Spurred by Member-Reported Junk Email
AOL Alleges Defendants Named in Lawsuits Are Responsible for Sending AOL Members One Billion Spam Emails, Resulting in Over 8 Million Member Spam Complaints

Dulles, VA – April 15, 2003 – America Online, Inc. (NYSE: AOL), as part of its ongoing, comprehensive battle against spammers, today announced a sweeping series of lawsuits against individuals and companies that it alleges have repeatedly sent members high volumes of unwanted junk emails using a variety of evasive means to circumvent AOL’s spam filters.

AOL is filing five separate lawsuits against over a dozen companies and individuals, who the Company alleges are together responsible for sending an estimated one billion spam emails to AOL members and generating over 8 million individual spam complaints from members. The latest lawsuits filed by AOL are the first to leverage the complaints received by AOL from its members who are using the popular “Report Spam” button in AOL 8.0.

The defendants named in these lawsuits are alleged to have sent a variety of offensive and unwanted spam emails including: pornography; male organ growth/enlargement products; mortgage and home refinancing offers; college degrees; steroids; cable TV descrambler products; and software products. The kinds of spammers and the type of spamming named in these lawsuits are exactly representative of what AOL members face on a daily basis.

The methods alleged to have been used by the named defendants in these cases to send spam to AOL members include many of the egregious and fraudulent methods used today by spammers, such as: falsification of email addresses; purposefully and systematically evading spam filters set up by AOL and its members; and pursuing other means of spamming members that are prohibited by AOL’s published “Unsolicited Bulk Email Policy” (see www.aol.com).

Because AOL’s proprietary email network is located in Virginia, these lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria.

FEDERATION – GUIDANCE FOR OVERHEAD AND STAFF USERS
————————————————–
July 23 1995
Introduction
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hi! – and welcome to Federation. This document is intended to provide
guidance for overhead and staff account holders on AOL who are playing
Federation (referred to as OHs in this document).

As an OH playing Federation you are in a privileged position, because
we do not get paid for your usage. Because you are in a position of
privilege, you have obligations to AOL and the Federation team that paying
players do not.

At the moment, we allow any OH to play Fed, but bear in mind that if your
presence in Fed starts to cause us problems then you will be locked out of
the game, and if we get too many problems with OHs we will simply stop all
OHs from playing.

**>> FEDERATION GREETER'S GUIDE 96.09.30 TOS SECTION

HOW TO DEAL WITH TOS PROBLEMS

It's a sad fact that part of your job is to act as a Fed Cop and stop people
from offending against TOS or the Federation Policy. Greeters are the first
line of action when someone starts misbehaving, and, except in very serious
cases or when you are very busy, generally Hosts won't intervene until you
ask them to bump or lock someone.

Please do not be afraid to pass a problem player to a Host to deal with. If
you give someone a TOS warning, and they ignore it, there's usually not much
point giving them another warning - they need to be bumped out of the game as
a wake-up call, or locked out completely.