Posted on 06/06/2007 8:55:53 AM PDT by george76
Four more Internet service providers will start charging banks, e-commerce sites and other large e-mail senders for guaranteed delivery.
In deals expected to be announced Thursday, Goodmail Systems Inc. is expanding its CertifiedEmail program to Comcast Corp. (CMCSA), Cox Communications Inc., Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC)'s Road Runner and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Time Warner Inc. (TWX)'s AOL became inaugural participants last year.
Individuals, businesses and organizations will be able to continue sending messages for free, but they risk finding those missives caught in increasingly aggressive spam filters.
With Goodmail, a company can pay a quarter of a penny per message to bypass those filters and reach inboxes directly. Recipients see a blue seal verifying that the message is legitimate; senders get confirmations and can resend messages lost in transit.
Non-profit groups can participate, too, at about a tenth of the commercial rates.
At least half of the fees go to the service provider, Goodmail Chief Executive Richard Gingras said.
For now, Goodmail will approve only companies and organizations in existence for at least a year, to thwart fly-by-night operations. Those that have prompted too many spam complaints will be disqualified.
The service is designed to certify credit card statements, e-commerce receipts and other communications with existing customers. It does potentially give a boost to larger corporations and groups that can afford the charge, but Gingras says their messages are the ones most likely to be mischaracterized as junk.
Peter Castleton, Verizon's director of consumer broadband services, said his company would still let senders apply for "whitelisting" - and thus bypass filters as well - without charge. Goodmail's service, he said, is for those that want approval at multiple ISPs at once.
This gets rid of indiscriminate spam (they’re not going to pay even a quarter of a cent to send out billions of herbal Viagra ads), but it still means that those willing to buy targeted lists will have a more effective way of clogging inboxes. A quarter of a cent is a bargain compared to what it takes to send junk snail mail. And look how much of the latter you still get!
Technology solves the problems of technology. by end of summer someone will be selling software which cuts off the by-pass. by year end (or earlier) it will be a free download. freedom works...
The only “filters” they can bypass are the ones in the Comcast, et al routers. The personal filters installed on your PC will still “take them out”. Yet another argument against “network computing” and for “my machine on my desk” computing.
What good is a “filter” if it has a “hole” in it?.........
Damned individualist......You will be sent to the re-education camps immediately!.......check your e-mail for when / where to report........
Um, you can use filters on "network computing", too, and in that case, the data never even goes over the line to your terminal, whereas in the "machine on my desk" case, you still receive it, only to junk it.
I guess it depends what kind of mail pickup you use.
I use Outlook Express to sweep all my accounts with pop3 or Imap, and I have my own spam filter to deal with the messages I get. I prefer not to have my email providers do the filtering, because frankly I don’t trust their filters not to filter out valid messages.
If I have an account like Amazon or my broker that I don’t want filtered, I whitelist it myself. Then if Walmart or Sears wants to send me junkmail and pays this new company for the privilege, who cares?
The fundamental problem with spam is not that it's annoying, but that the sender is using someone else's resources to send their stuff. If the sender wants to pay to use those resources, then that solves the fundamental problem.
Annoyances can still be solved by personal filters.
By definition filters must have holes or nothing (including what you want) would get through. Filters need let some things through, what you are asking for is a brick wall.
They can guaranee delivery all they want but as long as I can configure local rules on my client and, save that, retain the DELETE function, they can never penetrate my defenses. HA HA HA.
I work with 4 types of filters everyday.....High Pass, Low pass, Band Pass, and coffee.........
It still gets sent from the Comcast server to the server of your network, though. YOU (or your company) still has to do the job.
Gasp--you've outed me. How will I survive??
Looks like we need one of those “No Holes” filters on the border!
Lame
Good point. I use MailWasher, myself. It does a great job of pre-managing spam for me.
First step towards regulation.
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