AOL and Yahoo to Offer Filter Circumvention 264
tiltowait wrote to mention a report on MSNBC's site stating that AOL and Yahoo are both planning to introduce a for-pay way to circumvent their spam filters. From the article: "The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate."
How does this prevent spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
p.s. I can't wait until I start seeing the 'seal alerting recipients they're legitimate.' attached as a gif file to spam in my inbox.
A slippery slope to a full-blown racket? (Score:5, Insightful)
I had to read the story twice before realizing it wasn't a hoax [snopes.com].
While charging for reliably sending e-mail may be a good way to fight spam, putting the onus on the sender to pay isn't that great an idea.
I run an opt-in, non-profit, ad-free announcement list [tk421.net], for example. I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!
I don't know how AOL filters work, but ideally a user could whitelist an address. But the pay-for-bypass method seems designed around reaching users that *don't* specify they want the "priority" spam.
Just how many boxes of this checklist [craphound.com] does this plan grossly violate?
Fighting spam vs. being paid off (Score:5, Insightful)
What a surprise that AOL & Yahoo are doing this. They can proclaim that they are "fighting spam" and be paid for it at the same time. This does absolutely nothing to stop the zombie networks hemorrhaging spam or the bulk mailers in countries with lax - no UCE laws.
The money doesn't pass to the user receiving the 'solicited' commercial bulk mail, but rather to the email provider. This will simply create a new class of "legitimate" spam; equivalent to the "Addressed to Occupant" bulk mail that floods the snail mailbox.
translation (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course what they really mean is that the fees are an attempt by these companies to make money from spam.
The new scheme doesn't do anything to weed out spam, since the existing spam filters remain in place. All the new scheme does (as the /. headline "AOL and Yahoo to Offer Filter Circumvention"
accurately reflects, unlike the AOL and Yahoo marketing
doublespeak) is to give senders with money a leg up and a
"privileged" level of access to the end users' mailboxes.
Next (Score:5, Insightful)
Its all about the might $!
Actually (Score:2, Insightful)
Does anybody know if there is a blacklist of these companies? I'd love to add their names to my proxy to block anybody from my office from going back to their sites.
Might take a bit longer to kill the problem, but anything would help...
E-Mail Vs. Mail (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does this prevent spam? (Score:5, Insightful)
At least it will make filtering out spam easier, just filter out anything with the "seal of approval".
-JesseIf we charge them to send you spam (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
It's still spam, but the network provider is taking a cut of the profits to betray you.
I don't have a problem with this. (Score:4, Insightful)
They will probably care later as I quickly learn that their seal of approval is another level of spam and start automatically deleting it. But until then I wish them well. After all the e-mail service is costing me nothing.
Re:Actually (Score:3, Insightful)
What is the address of "B1gg3r P3n15 Incorperated", again? And how do I get there to attack them?
Seriously, I don't usually see spam from real, legitimate companies. Most of what I get is from some shady "deal-too-good-to-be-true" kind of outfit with no name.
My bet is the spammer, and the company selling the "product" are usualy one in the same.
Right (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the problems with this scheme are:
- No provision for non-profit entities (e.g. mailing lists I run for friends, etc.)
- The amount isn't set by the appropriate party (i.e. the only person qualified to determine how much it should cost you to send me mail, is me.)
- The criteria aren't set by the appropriate party (i.e. similarly, the only person qualified to determine whether a given source of mail *should* be subject to this charge/filtering in order to send to my mailbox, is me.)
- Doesn't scale (if every ISP does it, you have to pay every ISP, billing/paying costs become ridiculous, etc)
There may be other problems too, for example AOL's implementation may be insecure. In fact, I'm guessing it will be.
Bonded Sender, Mail Senders, Bulk -vs- Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.bondedsender.com/fees.html [bondedsender.com] shows their rates (for If it costs $12.50 for 5000 users (1/4 cent per e-mail), to make big e-mail providers (particularly webmail providers) to like their e-mail, that's a legitimate cost to the cover and drinks they'll make off of each person. If it brings in one person it's probably worth it.
These folks aren't Spammers, in the same way that when you sign up for news on CNN or your favourite software company, they're not Spammers either. People _WANT_ and _CHOOSE_ to get their mail. It is BULK mail, and I'll admit that (bulk not meaning junk). Spam filters continue to get smarter in knowing the difference between Spam, Bulk, and Personal mail. Personal mail is sent by a user. Bulk mail is things you want like newsletters. Spam offers a bigger penis through the use of Viagikra *sic*.
ISPs that group bulk and Spam into one category are missing the point of a Spam filter. It is not to keep bulk e-mail out but to be programmed to determine what the mail someone wants (or may want) to read and something that is unsolicited. The solicited/unsolicited mix is the important one.
Person-to-person mail is good.
Solicited mail is good.
Unsolicited commercial e-mail is bad.
-M
The post office charges (Score:2, Insightful)
Dumb users? (Score:3, Insightful)
If I get a survey I did not request, it will be reported as spam: unsolicited electronic mail. It wouldn't surprise me at all if spammers have a more generous definition of what spam is.
Smart companies do not get blocked. (Score:5, Insightful)
But companies who are legit would not be doing that in the first place, right?
If I block all zombie emailers from my users, then offer companies access to my users for a fee, as long as they don't use zombies
This will not cut down on the crappy ads.
This is nothing more than the ISP's attempt to sell access to their users.
If you're running a smart company's ads, then you already take precautions against being blocked/blacklisted.
Actually, I think that this is somewhat good (Score:3, Insightful)
But one of the biggest problems with spam isn't the spam itself, that's just an annoyance. The biggest problem is that spam-filters have made email unreliable.
Today, when I send a message, I'm not sure if the recipient will get it or if it will end up as a false positiv. And for some buisiness mails, even a
Now, this scheme can prove interesting as it give buisiness a way to guarantee delivery of crucial email.
And for thoose crying "extortion" : snail mail already does this : for a fee, they will deliver the mail directly to the person and collect their signature, thereby granting guaranteed delivery. And they advertise that they care more about these mails, so that there is less chance of them "getting lost".
So : this does nothing to fighting spam, but guaranteed delivery is still interesting.
On the other hand, if they really remove their spam-filter and only deliver white-listed and paid-for mail to the inbox and everything else to the spam folder (like I read in another article about this plan), now, this would actually make spam worse, as it would increase the number of false positives so much that everybody would have to read their spam-box anyway.
Re:How does this prevent spam? (Score:3, Insightful)
Three words: Pre-paid credit card.
Four words: Overseas credit card account.
Three more words: Stolen credit card.
Re:translation (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, so once you establish this organization, how are you going to pay for it? The current senders have to spend resources to avoid spam filters, which invariably catch some opt-in email. If this email is high value, then it's worthwhile to pay a little bit to ensure that it gets delivered. But how do you engage the cooperation of the mailbox provider? The best way is to pay them. You could wait for your customer to demand it of the mailbox provider, but that's the egg portion of the chicken and egg problem. The organization MUST take money from the people with the most to lose by dropped email.
s/organiztion/Goodmail/
s/mailbox provider/AOL and Yahoo/
s/sender/Paypal/
-russ
This is all just a way to get paid for spam (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How does this prevent spam? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like you, I don't believe it will. However, AOL and yahoo can now make some money off those viagra and home mortgage companies who use this "service".
Spammer spends 100,000 emails x 1/4 = 25,000 USD for AOL/yahoo. Spammer generates 1,000 sales x $40/product = $40,000 - $25,000 = $15,000 profit!It's a win win scenario for both parties. IMO, it's just a commercial way of filtering out those spammers who won't pay to play...
Re:slashdot morons (Score:2, Insightful)
This is more greed at hand. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think whats really happening is that Yahoo and AOL are noticing that spam isn't going away, and in fact has a new bunch of trouters pushing the junk and they (the spammers) are making a ton of money out of it. Yahoo and AOL want a piece of their pie. The filters aren't generally working and they spammers continuously find ways around the filters. Big cat-n-mouse game. I think they stand to make some serious cash revenues out of this and it will help their corporate bottom lines more than it will effect the numbers of spam.
Keep those filters up on the client end boys and girls. It's the only way of evading this scourge of the planet!!
Cheers