AOL and Yahoo to Offer Filter Circumvention

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."

Comments

How does this prevent spam?

[Mrs. Grundy]

I'm at a loss to understand how this will reduce spam. If I understand TFA they will essentially be allowing certain companies a pass through the spam filter in exchange for money. While I can see how this is useful in a situation like AOL or Yahoo! mail where the end user has little control over the spam filterparameters and is having trouble getting wanted e-mail from their bank or other business, I don't understand why they think spam producers will stop finding ways to circumvent the filter--it still seems like business asusual for spammers. I have my spam filter set up to let certain mail through automatically, but I canguarantee that this has not reduced the amount of spam hitting the filter. It sounds like they stand to make a decent amount of money from this and would rather make is sound like it's an anti-spam measure when really it is closer to advertising.

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.

Re:How does this prevent spam?

[Enigma_Man]

At least it will make filtering out spam easier, just filter out anything with the "seal of approval".

-Jesse

Re:How does this prevent spam?

[skoaldipper]

> I'm at a loss to understand how this will reduce spam.

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...

A slippery slope to a full-blown racket?

[tiltowait]

See Antispam group rejects e-mail payment plan for more reactions.

I had to read the story twice before realizing it wasn't a hoax.

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, 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 does this plan grossly violate?

Fighting spam vs. being paid off

[MyNymWasTaken]

AOL and Yahoo would get a cut of the fees charged by Goodmail.

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

[ummit]

The fees are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam

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

[3CRanch]

So I suppose the next thing would be a 1/4 to 1 cent charge to the users to have the bypass-spam get re-filtered.

Its all about the might $!

If we charge them to send you spam

[WillAffleckUW]

does it make it any less spam-like?

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.

[CyberLord Seven]

I have a free (as in beer) e-mail account with Yahoo. They bear the financial impact of spam, not me. If this let's them defer some of that cost, what do I care?
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.

Smart companies do not get blocked.

[khasim]

In the UBE industry, spam is viewed differently than it is here on slashdot.

Yep. They love it, we hate it.

Whereas we consider Spam any unsolicited ad, spam is considered email that does not follow the rules of CANSPAM in the industry -- that is it doesn't allow opt-outs, emails come from scrapes, etc.

Yep. Those are also included in the "spam" usage for me.

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 ... there's no benefit for the legit companies.

What this fee does is it allows companies that follow optout and other rules to get inbox delivery for a fee.

And those companies are already the ones least likely to be blocked.

Further, because the cost goes from about $0.00001 per message to around $0.0025-$0.01 per message for that delivery, the marketer has incentive to target his list more carefully rather than just blasting everybody in sight.

AGAIN, the legit companies do NOT do that ALREADY.

This also gets rid of some of the crappier ads, as the marketer is going to pass the $10,000 fee on to the advertiser.

Nope. Because the company/person most likely to send out those crappy ads will still send them and just try to get around the filters.

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.