America Online (AOL), attempted to disprove the adage ‘All that glitters isn’t gold’ today by announcing sweepstakes worth a sizzling $100,000 of cash and gold bars, together with a Hummer H2 (2003) automobile, all in aid of disposing of the ill-gotten gains of a major spammer brought to account with the help of AOL members.
Citing a reduction of over 85% in AOL member reported/referred spam, Virginia based AOL quoted exuberant statistics of some 1.4 billion pieces of spam blocked each day by AOL’s anti-spam filters, highlighting a sense of achievement from figures as high as 2.4 billion spam messages blocked, on a single day in 2003.
Acting under the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, the bounty of cash and gold bars were seized as part of the first lawsuit filed by AOL, as well as a judgment of $13 million against the remaining entities of the spam gang brought to account.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of America Online, Jon Miller, said ‘The safety and security of our members is Job No. 1 at AOL, and that means taking aggressive action against spammers and scammers. I am delighted that our efforts are paying off, literally, with the seizure of these assets and the sweepstakes.’
Together with the sweepstakes, eligible for entry by AOL members, visitors to AOL.com and web-users, AOL also announced high-end computer equipment, worth tens of thousands of dollars, again seized from this spammer, would be donated to local public schools and school systems in Northern Virginia.
