Class Calls Huff Post a Relentless Spammer

CHICAGO (CN) - In a federal class action, a woman claims the Huffington Post bombards people with text-message news alerts at all hours, despite their repeated requests to stop it.

Lead plaintiff Alicia St. Leger sued TheHuffingtonPost.com.

St. Leger says she signed up for the Huffington Post's "Daily Brief," expecting to receive one text message a day, with a summary of breaking news.

Instead, she got multiple text messages a day, which were charged to her wireless text plan. She says Huffington Post ignored her repeated requests to unsubscribe.

"In an effort to increase viewership and revenue, Huffington Post, the proprietor of the well-known news website www.huffingtonpost.com, encourages visitors to its website to subscribe to receive 'daily' news alerts in the form of 'text message' calls to their cellular phones. Once subscribed, defendant floods consumers' cellular phones with multiple text message calls every day, frequently transmitting unwanted text messages at all hours of the day and night," the complaint states.

"Frustrated with defendant's delivery of excessive automated text message calls (hereinafter, 'wireless spam'), plaintiff and members of the putative class opted out of receiving further wireless spam from Huffington Post. Despite this, defendant has continued to transmit wireless spam to plaintiff and other consumers throughout the nation long after they have opted out from receiving any text message calls from Huffington Post."

She adds: "Unlike more conventional communications, unsolicited telephone calls to cellular telephones frequently cost recipients money because cell phone users like plaintiff must pay their respective wireless service providers either for each text message call they receive or else incur a usage allocation deduction to their text plan for each call they receive, regardless of whether or not the call is authorized."

St. Leger claims she made numerous efforts to remove herself from the Daily Brief subscription list.

"Plaintiff repeatedly replied 'Stop' to the sender of the text messages, to no avail. Unable to discontinue the messages by replying to the message, plaintiff resorted to attempting to contact defendant through other channels to unsubscribe from receiving the text messages," the complaint states.

She says she emailed several addresses listed on the Huffington Post's website, and contacted AOL, the Huffington Post's parent company.

"Despite having expressly informed defendant (and defendant's parent company) on multiple occasions to discontinue the transmission of text messages to her cellular phone, defendant continues to send plaintiff multiple unsolicited text messages to her phone at virtually all hours of the day," St. Leger says.

St. Leger seeks an injunction, costs and class damages for violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

She is represented by Bradley Baglien, with Edelson McGuire.

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