AOL emails being limited

[#1]

Sorry that this is about another ISP, but I haven't come across it before.
A friend of ours is with AOL, and has been for many years.
A couple of days ago, she was emailing, when she got a message saying:
"We have a limit on how many e-mails you can send in an hour and a limit on how many people you can send them to" plus there was a list of 'no sends'.
It's the first time that this has happened and she is completely confused about it. She is hardly daring to send any emails at the moment.
Has anyone any thoughts on this, please?
No disrespect to her, but she is not very computer knowledgeable and I doubt she would know how to ask AOL about it.
Thanks
Keith

[#2]

http://www.emailquestions.com/aol/1092-what-max-receipients-limits-aol.html

Quote

AOL Email Send (Rate) Limits AOL imposes a rate limit on an AOL member when a member exceeds the acceptable number of email messages sent in a given time period. The following restrictions apply when sending emails from an AOL connection:

[#3]

Limits of this type are often set to restrict the scope for compromised computers to distribute spam. The limits are usually sufficiently high that a normal user wouldn't encounter them.
Has you friend got proper virus and firewall protection in place?

[#4]

Thank you, Oldjim and spraxyt, for your replies.
I have sent your information on to our friends.
The lady does 90% of the computing, so it will be interesting (to say the least) to read her reply.
Cheers
Keith