In an escalation in its fight against junk e-mail, America Online has filed five federal lawsuits against more than a dozen companies and individuals accused of being major distributors of spam, according to reports.
The AOL suits, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., seek a total of $10 million in damages and an end to the spammers' e-mail activities, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Four of the suits were filed on Monday and one was filed late on Friday, the article said.
AOL said the targets of its suits were responsible for sending its members an estimated 1 billion pieces of spam that generated more than 8 million complaints, the newspaper reported.
AOL has 27 million members in the United States.
Internet users have characterized spam, which clutters inboxes with pitches for everything from pornography to ways to lose weight, as one of the biggest annoyances of using the Web. Fighting spam has now become a top priority for a number of Internet service providers.
News source: c|net
