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AOL and Yahoo to Offer Filter Circumvention

Posted by Zonk on from the thank-you-for-thinking-of-me dept.

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."

6 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. most reliable spam filter ever: by wpegden · · Score: 5, Funny

    trash "certified" email.

  2. Fighting spam vs. being paid off by MyNymWasTaken · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. translation by ummit · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  4. Da' Mafia! by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Say, dat's a nice email message you got there. It would be a shame if some spam filter caught it. ;)

  5. Next by 3CRanch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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 $!

  6. Yeah, like 1/4cent is a lot to a Nigerian Prince! by The_REAL_DZA · · Score: 5, Funny

    He probably spends more than that in a day on hotdogs and beer!

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