Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Oregon Woman Sues Yahoo for $3 Million

Posted by Zonk on from the a-little-to-much-hoo dept.

bigtallmofo writes "After notifying Yahoo that two member profiles about her were not authorized, Cecilia Barnes of Oregon is suing Yahoo for $3 million for failing to take down the profiles in a timely manner. The profiles allegedly set up by her ex-boyfriend contained nude photos of her along with her email address and work phone number. (Note: The member profiles have since been taken down by Yahoo)."

2 of 670 comments (clear)

  1. Adult Groups a Liability Risk by geomon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think that portal-based adult groups will probably go "bye-bye" if they are viewed as a financial risk to the hosting site. Yahoo puts all of this webspace up without asking questions about the veracity of the information and then doesn't have the resources to properly police it. I'm sure MSN will drop theirs as well if this case goes against Yahoo.

    I'm sure that this woman is not the first person who has had an ex-boyfriend/husband/lover post nude pictures of them on the net.

    --
    "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
    1. Re:Adult Groups a Liability Risk by Retric · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He used said information as part of a larger act of fraud so he is clearly liable. He might have been allowed to post those pics and that information but he also impersonated him in chat sessions to get men to show up at her office thinking they where going to have sex with her.

      Now AOL might not be required to take down her pictures and / or contact information but clearly letting him continue to use there system for months after they had been notified he was committing fraud with their system exposes them to some risk.

      IMO 3mil seems like a reasonable level of compensation for an organization that willfully allowed such level of harassment to continue for months. It's not like she is trying to get them to verify all information in their system just to have a system to take information down in the event it's misused. Think of the risk they would be taking if the pictures where of a 13 year old and they waited months to take them down.