I'm at a crossroads here... As much as I would hate to have to pay another bill, Getting rid of spam or at least slowing it down for 1 Cent per email may be worth it!
What do you guys think?




Yahoo, AOL announce email 'postage' fee

Does a decision by two of the world's biggest email account providers to offer a fee-based email delivery service signal the end of free email as we know it?

Probably not ... yet.

But the decision by Yahoo and America Online (AOL) to charge senders an optional fee to send email directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters could effectively mean that not all emails are created equal.

The service will effectively mean that emailers that pay the fee will have their messages tagged as if they were "special delivery" emails.

And those who pay will be more likely to see their messages get through to the intended recipient than those who choose the fee free option.

The Yahoo and AOL fees, which would cost up to one US cent per email, are the latest attempts to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity theft scams.

The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

In exchange for paying, email senders will be guaranteed their messages will not be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they are legitimate.

Companies that would use this service typically send out of man thousands of emails to subscribers of electronic newsletters and alerts.

Both companies have long filtered email by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent email.

AOL also strips images and web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious web addresses.

Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail, making life difficult for businesses that rely on email.

"We were hearing not only from members but also email partners that they wanted a different way of delivering email that would stand out in the in box and would guarantee them delivery," said spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of Time Warner, will start offering the service in the next two months.

Spokeswoman Karen Mahon said today that Yahoo will begin offering a similar service in the coming months.

The plan, while it is optional and would apply to only a fraction of people sending email, amounts to a reversal in the economics of the internet because it would charge message senders rather than those receiving them.

The current model has led to the proliferation of spam and so-called phishing scams because the people perpetuating them can turn a profit even when only a minority of recipients respond, analysts say.

AOL and Yahoo say the program, which is being offered through a company called Goodmail Systems, will target banks, online retailers and other groups that send large amounts of email.

Companies that do not want to pay a fee will be able to send email to Yahoo and AOL members exactly as they have in the past, Graham and Mahon said.

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I think its a great idea for the sender to have to pay a penny or two to send an email... BUT theres that whole having to pay for what once was free slope that gets very slippery very quickly...

I say a convicted "spammer" should be charged a dollor per email they've sent in the past month... Put it in a fund for identity theift victems

~Nate

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No matter how high the cost of postage gets I still get a mountain of junk mail everyday, since I've been gmailed I get 1 or 2 spams a day...tops.

I aggree... Well said.

I see your point but mail has been around way longer than email. Just imagine how much junk mail you "would" get if mail was free. I happen to have multiple email accounts that are constantly exposed on the internet and I get hundreds of spam emails a day. It's a real PITA when it takes me hours to sort the good stuff from the garbage.

Stupid idea in my mind. I wouldn't pay for email. GMail is the way to go for free email... otherwise, there are lots of ways to deal with spam.

On my machine at work, I've had pretty good results using SpamBayes to handle the spam. It doesn't use a canned set of filters, but instead trains on the user's mail.

It's very, very rare now for it to classify a Spam message as legitimate, and I've never (to my knowledge) had it classify a legitimate message to me as Spam. I get a few (usually 4 or fewer) messages a day that it classifies as "unsure", and it continues to train on those when I tell it whether they're Spam or not.

I wouldn't mind having the option of paying a fee that's completely optional to get rid of spam. My solution to spam, however, is to have a separate email account for things on the internet that require an address that I figure will probably spam me. Friends and places such as this get my real address. I'd hate to see a "stamp" on all email someday.

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Seth

1984 300D 225K
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I liked the Russian solution to spammers.

PM me your email address and i will send a gmail invite.

The other and not so public side of this change is that companies such as yahoo are now requiring that corporate customers register their senders so that they will be on a white or safe senders list. They require that each sender be registered. If you are part of a corporation, or to put it more simply, have your own domain name, yahoo wants to know every sender in your organization, every domain name you use, and if you send bulk mail. The idea is a good one as qualifying the senders has long been seen as perhaps the best way to eliminate spam. If your domain name is not registered with yahoo all your mail will or will soon end up in the bulk mail folder. This is true even if you’ve never had any problems sending to yahoo before.

Charging folks for mail is just a scam to turn all the “free” email accounts into a bottomless revenue pit. It will have absolutely 0 effect on the amount of spam that is sent or received. The reason this is true is that the vast majority of spam shows up from non existant or falsly represented domains.

The other problem that I've seen with yahoo mail, and aol mail for that matter is that both the mail processing time and the web response time have increased dramatically. Using yahoo mail has become akin to a very slow dial up account.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

Spam free, ha, yeah right. Just like I am junk mail free. I don't think the email companies can keep all the spam out. They can't do it now, and it seems to just get worse.

MedMech, I have gmail and I still get spam.

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stupidest idea i have heard in a while.. wtf? hahahaha.

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