America Online Inc., which has been in the
forefront of the fight against spammers, sued two Michigan companies that it
claims are responsible for sending thousands of unsolicited ads to AOL
members touting porn Web sites.
The suit, filed Jan. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of
Virginia, seeks an injunction to prevent the companies from “persistently
aggravating AOL members with junk e-mail.” The suit also seeks damages from
both companies, which are owned and operated by the same individuals.
Defendants are LCGM Inc. and Web Promo Inc., both of Madison Heights, MI. AOL
accused the two of repeatedly spamming its members with advertisements for
domains such as “live-video-sex.com,” “pornjunkie.com,” “hot-sex.com” and
“xxxratedsex.com.”
The suit also alleges that the defendants forged references to AOL’s domain
name in their junk e-mail. The use of forged references to “aol.com,” a
practice that has become increasingly common among junk e-mailers, is
designed to hinder AOL’s ability to detect and filter such unwanted e-mail.
The suit also targets the practice of including hypertext links to
pornographic Web sites in junk e-mail, a practice that has been highly
criticized by AOL and its members.
The e-mails with hypertext links, which are sent indiscriminately to AOL
members regardless of age, provide direct access to pornographic Web sites.
The suit alleges that LCGM and Web Promo have made extensive use of this
practice.