AOL Sued for E-mail Ads | California man filed class-action suit against AOL for allegedly including text e-mail ads in footers of paid subscribers’ outgoing messages November 5, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , trackbackA California man has filed a class-action suit against AOL for allegedly including text e-mail ads in the footers of paid subscribers’ outgoing messages.
Filed by Encino, CA-based Hamner Law Offices on behalf of Frank Cecchini, the suit claims AOL wrongly inserted the ads in outgoing e-mail from 2 million paid subscribers, or 20% of AOL’s e-mail users.
The suit claims that nowhere in AOL’s terms of service does it say ads will appear in paying subscribers’ messages.
“As such, AOL pay e-mail subscribers expect the ability to send out e-mail without advertisements inserted into their e-mail,” the suit claims. “This is different from e-mail services provided by so-called free e-mail accounts (such as Hotmail.com and Yahoo.com) which do insert various advertisements into sent e-mails.”
The complaint continues: “Unlike ‘banner’ advertisements or other overt Internet advertisements, these footers, or ad tags, essentially add to and/or change the actual message contained in the e-mail.”
As a result, AOL users who don’t want ads inserted into their messages choose the premium service, the complaint said.
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