April 7, 2006
Verizon is offering to pay its DSL customers who missed emails because of the company's allegedly over-aggressive spam-blocking mechanism. It's part of a class action lawsuit settlement announced this week.
If a consumer failed to get mail from a European address from December 2004 to May 2005, the person can get $3.50 for each month in which that occurred. Same dollar amount for Asian addresses, but it covers October 2004 to May 2005. Verizon changed its spam-blocking policies in April of 2005.
The attorneys handling the case have set up a Web site at emailblockingsettlement.com to disseminate information and collect the data about potential members of the class.
The class includes all business and residential customers of Verizon FiOS, DSL, and dial-up Internet services in the United States at any time from October 1, 2004 to May 31, 2005, who had use of one or more email accounts on the Verizon.net email platform.
The suit was filed in February 2005 on behalf of seven subscribers to Verizons digital subscriber line ("DSL") and dial-up Internet Service. The complaints alleged allege that beginning in October 2004, Verizon, in an overbroad attempt to block spam and other illegitimate emails, blocked legitimate incoming emails to some Verizon subscribers.
The complaints charged that Verizon did not provide advance notice to its customers of the blocks and did not appropriately respond to customer complaints about them.
The suit charged that Verizons spam-blocking system constituted a breach of contract to deliver email in accordance with accepted email delivery protocols.
More information is available at www.emailblockingsettlement.com/index.htm. The deadline to file a claim is August 9, 2006.
