Slashdot Mirror
AOL Won't Budge on Email Tax
deman1985 writes "InformationWeek reports that AOL has no intentions to budge on its use of certified email. The company today released a statement apparently in response to the vast amounts of criticism over the past week from consumers and various organizations. From the article: 'We believe more choices, and more alternatives, for safety and e-mail authentication is a good thing for the Internet, not bad,' said an AOL spokesman. 'Everything that AOL has in place today free for e-mail senders remains -- and will only improve.' The programs critics aren't so optimistic, but that doesn't seem to be hampering the company's plans. In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet, AOL announced, 'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'"
'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'
That's a pretty large swath of my calender... someone got another highlighter? Mine wore out around March 14th.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
i have to mark the entire next 30 days on my calendar?
-- lol pwned
You can sign it here: http://www.dearaol.com/. MoveOn.org (political action group) is renouncing this absurb proposal by AOL as well. So it's not just strictly tech companies that are opposed to this.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
Since I don't have a single family member, friend or business contact with an AOL address--and can't remember the last time I did, must be at least five years ago--I really couldn't care less.
this might seem a little aloof...but why do we, as Slashdot, care if people who mass-mail AOL users are going to be charged a really, really idiotic e-mail tax? AOL has never been known for cutting-edge technology and innovation (unless you want to count free CDs being used as frisbees/mirrors/coasters). Let the AOL spammers pay more to spam their gullible victims...I'm sure no one who reads /. uses AOL, and fewer probably care...
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Just the sort of carry on regardless my experience with AOL product managers leads me to expect.
Considering this new developement, it looks like AOL will make it EVEN HARDER to cancel their service.. Charging your phone company by the minute for each call you make attempting to cancel.
"What happend to just paying for a product without being constantly nibbled to death by Credit Card Ducks?"
What do you expect from a company that can't figure out how else to make money besides raising dialup costs?
You know how most places with rebates and such won't accept a PO box as a valid email address?
I'd be sorely tempted to say "no aol.com addresses" when people sign up for stuff. Just put a note on the signup page that says "due to AOL's policies, we can't guarantee that you will receive the email that we send to you, therefore an AOL.COM email address is not a reliable means of communication.
>> "Mark it on your calendars."
Wow. That a classic example of manager-spreak. Lord, help them, they're being managed. You can bet the farm on that.
I know it's just a headline, but "tax" is putting this much too strongly. Taxes are levied by governments. Governments have a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force--thus, if you don't pay your tax, the government has the authority to knock you upside the head, confiscate your property, put you in jail, etc. AOL will have no such authority to collect this fee. Mass mailers will be perfectly free not to pay the fee, and to encourage AOL users to dump that awful walled gate of an "online service." This is no tax.
Penny - plain text accounting
FTA: "Certified Email prevents and blocks spammers from sending e-mails to online users," said the AOL spokesman. Goodmail's program is 100-percent opt-in;
So in other words, Opt-ing and pay, or your email will be blocked. Spam kings willing to chip in would appear to be uneffected. Average joe mailing lists, kiss it good bye. Which beggs the question, why does anyone use AOL anymore?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Anyone who pays AOL to send me a certified email has just got to be someone I don't want to talk to.
They're trying to make a buck. Are you surprised? We are well our on way to paying for email. First comes the "premium" packages. You know, if you want a virus and spam free inbox with the ability to send mass mails. Later you have to pay for intermediate mail as well - if you send over a certain amount. The last step is to announce that because of the many security threats due to viruses and becuase of spam abuse and the high volume of email, EVERYONE will have to pay. It's an enterprise. It will start with the big companies, and once they force it on the market, the smaller companies will follow.
Isn't it funny how businesses think were stupid enough to believe statements like the following:
>>> Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members
Of course their motiviation is all about concern for the end-user. The fact that they will make money on every fricking email has no bearing on their decision to implement this.
"In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet"
"GO FUCK YOURSELF AOL" is also short and to the point, but far from sweet.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
There was a time when the only access to the internet for most people was a paid dial-up service where everything was nice and controlled. AOL made a stinking lot of money during the golden age. I think they want to enforce a new revenue stream. Sure, right now the old services are still free, but what happens when the bugs are worked out of the new system? You certainly have to respect the "My server, my rules" attitude, but with all the free email clients and the improved spam filtering, I think that AOL will finally drive the rest of their user away.
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
OSS groups have a lot of mailing lists. Are they going to have the funding to pay AOL? Probably not. Should anyone recieving the e-mail be an AOL subscriber anyway? Definately not, but there are some and the OSS group will want to reach their audience.
If an AOL user has you in their whitelist, you bypass all spam filters. No fees, no forms to fill out, no feedback loop to maintain, nothing. So all these charities just need to tell their users to put them in their whitelist before signing up for mailing lists or whatever. Lots of sites do this already, because they are aware of spam filters.
Edith Keeler Must Die
I guess I can't budge from decision not to use their services. Just boycott these people, even if you can't get broadband, find another ISP people.
As I understand it this is to block incoming messages to @aol.com addresses and that's fine. Who cares if someone@aol.com didn't get your email? Suppose you have an online store and someone makes a purchase using an @aol.com, I'd simply warn the purchaseer that "we don't send mail to @aol.com, use another email address." I imagine this will become the standard practice for treating aol.com users and they will complain or start using gmail or yahoo mail or whatever and so on.
uh huh. How about you fix this crap then, AOL? (tos warning for a legitimate user of a legitimate list...notice how AOL forges the #!$@# to line, and likely breaks some RFCs (I don't feel like checking). And where does AOL get off thinking they can call this TOS? I'm not the one on your network that you are screwing.
Here's an alternative: instead of paying with money, have senders pay in cpu cycles.
Someone will market a plug-and-play email server appliance a-la the Vonage phone box. Sure, you don't _need_ a separate doo-dad to do it, but if someone came up with a whiz-bang, minimal configuration, DynDns-using, WebMail serving "think GMail is good, this has 2 HUNDRED gigabytes and unlimited accounts" box for $99.95, if this stuff became widespread, they'd sell like hotcakes on Sunday morning. ...or Jobs will just load it up as standard software on the Mini, et voila.
I have already started adding it to signup forms on my site (forums that require email activation for example). There is no way I'm paying to send emails to new users.
Of course, this could end up with AOL users having to PAY for signups on things like email lists and other subscriptions, that would otherwise be free.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I for one will be blocking all @aol.com addresses from my email servers until AOL agrees to pay me 10 per email.
What goes around, comes around. As I previously suggested, internet extortionists risk everything...
How many fools will remain with AOL when other ISPs start blocking their email?
Of course MoveOn opposes it. MoveOn is exactly the sort of organization who gets hit by this. They send out large quantities of email, presumably to people who have signed up for it. If they send out a work-daily email to 100,000 AOL customers, at a $.001 non-profit rate (I'm making these numbers up, but they're on the rough order of magnitude) that's $100 a day, perhaps $20,000 a year. That's real money to a nonprofit, even if it's half the cost of a single stamp per person for an entire year.
The question would be whether AOL plays nicely. If they have a non-profit rate, does that mean that they WILL absolutely demand their inch of green? Or will they note that MoveOn plays by the spam rules and not block their emails? Will AOL extort that $20k a year even if MoveOn obviously isn't spamming?
I'm a little ticked that MoveOn is trying to pretend that they're fighting for the general freedom of Internet, lest AOL start extorting your grandmother to send baby pictures. In reality they're just interested in themselves. Rightly so, perhaps, but the cloak of hysteria bugs me.
You misread the article. Quote from the article: "Goodmail's program is 100-percent opt-in; Goodmail strictly disallows those who have not previously secured the expressed consent of consumers from signing up for Goodmail tokens."
In other words, Goodmail requires the mailers to have optained "opt-in" from the recipients. The usual "opt-out" link at the bottom of most spam is not acceptable. What's not clear to me, if how they can enforce that the recipient has indeed opted-in the mass mailing. But it's probably a pretty safe bet that spam outfits will not be able to buy "Goodmail tokens".
That would be ME.
"Balderdash and piffle," replies Jennings. "Nothing's really changed."
First: piffle means balderdash, doesn't it? What a bunch of tomfoolery and flimflam.
Second: sorry Jennings, something has changed. The FTC's CAN-SPAM law, debated though they may be, allow that unsolicited e-mail can be sent LEGITIMATELY under certain strict guidelines. AOL's e-mail "tax" will potentially damage the ability of legitimate law-abiding businesses to legally market their products.
Third: what is AOL's definition of spam? What does this mean for nonprofits who legitimately send mass e-mails? What about politicians who spam -- will AOL let that through, or not?
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
This might be a great time for an open community solution to the next evolution of e-mail. After all, will we still be writing messages through the same data standards in five or ten years? Perhaps there's a better message solution that will authenticate the sender and recipients... and in fact, maybe there are some out there already, in testing, or that haven't gained widespread attention, but are good ideas based upon open, readily-adoptable standards?
Back like more than a decade ago I used to pay for number of words, size, and destination country (or was it contintent...), in which was the first public ISP of my country. It seems the old times have crept up.
This is just an optional feature no one will use, not a tax.
a) Free mail will still get through to AOL users.
b) AOL users can still whitelist and blacklist senders, even certified senders.
So certified mail allows senders to pay for what privilege, again?
There's nothing to buy, there's no added value, this program will be DOA.
But it's just a stupid business idea, AOL doesn't have any authority to challenge the sanctity of email, no matter what some critics would have you believe.
You want to send me spam email, pay me.
Also, EVERYONE complaining about this is a spammer. They don't think they are spammers, but they are. If the recepients want you on their email, they will put you in their address book and you won't be charged a thing.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
In a quote that could only be labeled short and sweet, AOL announced, 'Implementation of this timely and necessary safety and security measure for our members takes place in the next 30 days. Mark it on your calendars.'"
I tried to mark it down on my Calendar, but an infected file from my AOL spam disabled it.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Can anyone on here give me an ADVANTAGE of using AOL!?!
Aww, poor MoveOn.org. Losing money because their contributors are mainly AOLers... nah, sorry, can't come up with any sympathy.
And besides, I don't quite see what MoveOn has to fear. You can still email AOLers, it's just that your email will be treated like any other; i.e., it won't be singled out as a special, certified-non-spam email. If they can reach people now, they'd still be able to under the "tax".
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Here's a thought...and I'm surprised I didn't see this in the comments. There are scores of free and advertiser-support e-mail streams out there--gmail, yahoo, etc. Why not work to direct AOL folks to use one of these services. Even if AOL is their ISP, they can, presently, hit these sites. I may even have some invites to gmail I can contribute to the cause.
Best case scenario is that NO e-mail traffic goes to AOL anymore. Their list revenue would be minimal at best. Having migrated off AOL for e-mail, the barrier to moving ISPs may be lower for some, so they would have fewer subscribers.
The only ways AOL could respond is to either drop the e-mail fee, or block free web-based e-mail sites. Choosing the latter would be taking on Yahoo, Google, and the rest, which I don't think is a fight they can win.
And in other news AOL announced a new subscription service for it's members, for an additional $5.95 a month members can enable the AOL goodmail filter service on their mailboxes which will block out all emails from senders that have signed up for AOLs "certified sender" list. :)
I have gone to notifications if somebody is using a aol address I do not guarantee
delivery of email since I have already been having many issues sending to subscribers....aol can do what they want and I can do what I want by notifying their customers that their ISP sucks..
Lisa: If I'm going to bail the country out, I'll have to ... [Lisa
raise taxes, but in my speech I'd like to avoid
calling it a, "painful emergency tax."
Milhouse: What about, "colossal salary grab."
Lisa: See, that has the same problem. We need to soften
the blow.
Milhouse: Well, if you just want to out-and-out lie
doesn't object] Okay, we could call it a, "temporary
refund adjustment."
Lisa: I love it.
Insert other obligitory Simpsons jokes here..
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
They can do powerful things here if they wanted to.
I really hope, AOL will charge those non-profit organisations the same as other businesses. Why should televangelists, corrupt political parties or other assorted whiny do-gooder have it easier to get to me? If a company tries to sell used condoms or recycled viagra, at least it tries to be productive.
It is great that AOL agrees with the reasons I dumped them back in 1998.
This has been way overhyped and misrepresented.
From http://www.goodmailsystems.com/certifiedmail/
The Facts About CertifiedEmail
* FACT: AOL and Yahoo! are not taxing email.
There is no 'email' tax. A tax is something one is required to pay. Taxes are uniformly imposed charges agreed to by a recognized & responsible government entity. Qualifying senders may elect to use CertifiedEmail at their option, the same way a sender of traditional mail might elect to use Express mail or regular USPS mail. Consumers will not pay anything to send or receive email!
* FACT: Small business and non-profits will not have to pay for something that used to be free.
First of all, no one has to pay. The service is optional. First class email has not suffered with the introduction of priority and Express Mail. With CertifiedEmail there is literally no change in the ability of Internet users to participate however they desire, nor will any user incur any new charges. Optional offerings, such as CertifiedEmail, allow ISPs to provide better and better services to those who choose them, and in turn provide a higher degree of safety to their members.
* FACT: The purpose of CertifiedEmail is to identify "good" mail, not to prevent spam.
Goodmail's goal is to raise the bar on sender behavior so that messages are not second-guessed by filters and instead follow a direct path to the inbox with a visual identification that the message is good. Goodmail has never suggested CertifiedEmail is the silver bullet for all of email's ills, or that it will prevent spam from getting into the inbox.
* FACT: Spammers can not pay to reach AOL and Yahoo! email inboxes.
The Goodmail service will NOT increase the amount of spam consumers receive. CertifiedEmail messages will be delivered only from senders that have obtained prior permission from recipients. CertifiedEmail is only for permissioned email from accredited senders who must meet strict qualifying criteria and agree to Goodmail's Acceptable Use and Security Policy. Qualified, accountable organizations will use the service only to communicate with existing, "opt in" customers.
* FACT: AOL and Yahoo! will not profit from spam and phishing protection.
ISPs currently bear the full burden of addressing the spam problem. The average ISP now spends $8-12 per subscriber per year on email hygiene, an expense that can only hurt the availability of low cost internet access and free email services. While Goodmail does share an appropriate portion of the revenue from CertifiedEmail with the ISPs to help defray the high cost of fighting spam, it is only a fraction of the amount they are already spending to protect their members' inboxes.
* FACT: Goodmail will offer a generous program for non-profits.
Some non-profits, like the American Red Cross, who's brands are targets of online fraud and phishing, will choose CertifiedEmail. Those who have had no issues with fraud and are satisfied with their current practices, will not need the service. Some opponents base their rhetoric on this fear. Be assured, the service is not required to get "good" mail through. Non-profits who see the benefits of the service will be able to try the service for free throughout 2006. Beyond 2006, Goodmail will provide generous discounts to non-profits and price CertifiedEmail as low as possible yet maintain the system's integrity and security.
* FACT: Goodmail and its ISP partners will only allow legitimate, qualified senders t
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
Then the AOL subscribers, who attempt to use the net for well established purposes, will stop receiving emails from some sources -- like vendors or lists. They will probably walk when this starts to happen. The subscribers will drive AOL's actions much more than letter writing campaigns.
Sounds sweet to me.
If I were a business, and an AOL user wanted to get my emails, they would have to pay for the priveledge. If AOL charges me for sending emails, I'm going to charge the user for recieving them. Consider it a high-tech form of postage.
Also, EVERYONE complaining about this is a spammer. They don't think they are spammers, but they are. If the recepients want you on their email, they will put you in their address book and you won't be charged a thing.
You're being quite naive here. Consider a legitimate retail company with thousands of customers who have legitimately and intentionally opted-in to receive product/service updates via email. Do you really think that, of those thousands, every one of them will bother to add the company to their address book? It might surprise you to know that many such company spend lots of time just responding to abuse reports from these idiots called customers. If you can manage to contact the customer by phone, they say "oh, duh, I forgot I signed up for this; yes I want it and sorry I reported you as spam" but of course they almost never bother to followup with their ISP to rescind the complaint.
Now, even if you think that might be a small percentage of the general population (although I can assure you it's not very small) consider that we're talking about AOL users here. These tend to be, let's just say, somewhat less savvy technologists than the general population.
So in summary, I'm complaining, I'm not a spammer in any sense of the word (customers do very much want our emails) and this costs more than just the money to be whitelisted. Guess what, instead of paying the recipients, the recipients will actually pays more because the company will ultimately just charge more to its customers to recoup the extra costs.
Either
Start charging AOL subscribers for joining the mailing list & explain to them why
OR
Put into the troubleshooting FAQ that AOL is their problem & give a list of alternatives ISPs they can switch to.
""Certified Email prevents and blocks spammers from sending e-mails to online users," said the AOL spokesman. Goodmail's program is 100-percent opt-in; Goodmail strictly disallows those who have not previously secured the expressed consent of consumers from signing up for Goodmail tokens. Given AOL's phenomenal public track record on spam, no one can credibly assert that AOL would sign up for a pay-to-spam program. Get real.""
Well I'm confused then. I mean if mass-emailers (spammers) are not, in fact, going to be able to pay to insure that their targets get their emails, then why are mass-emailers going to pay for this privelege?
I must not understand exactly what is being proposed here. Can someone clue me in? It sounded to me like AOL was going to charge entities for the privelege of being able to spam many accounts with their message. Is this not what it's all about?
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Why does everybody here think that AOL implementing this policy is the first step on a slippery slope to the end of email? It's not, nowhere near it.
What AOL is saying is that if you cover the costs to certify your email, they will ensure that it gets through and not stuck in a spam filter. AOL exists for one reason, to provide a service to their customers. If you feel that they charge to much or provide poor service and don't use them, guess what? You are not their customer.
AOL was the first successful ISP for the masses. Sure you and I might hate AOL and you may even feel that any user of AOL is an idiot. And that's fine for you to think, but the people who pay the monthly fee think they are getting their money's worth.
To all those who say "fine, I won't allow any AOL email addresses on my list" that's a great idea. Postal service is not guarenteed delivery, therefore do you refuse to send mail? Hell, even insured services such as UPS, FedEx, DHL are not guarenteed, they'll merely pay you in the event something is lost or damaged.
So you put up a notice saying that AOL users might not be able to receive emails and to ensure that the sending address is on a whitelist (and give directions on how to do this). Believe me, AOL will suffer more than anybody if innocent email doesn't get through. Bank statements, etc. and expected by recipients and when they call the bank and say "But I'm not receiving them" and the bank tells them that it's because of AOL filters, guess who is gonna be losing the customer?
Everybody should just chill out, let AOL (a company, responsible to shareholders, not geeks on Slashdot or mailing list owners) do what they feel is best. If it doesn't work, they will lose customers, if it works, I doubt I'll ever see a story about its success on Slashdot.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
bada bing!
Knight37 - Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer
..likewise new businesses. "In order to meet the strict qualifying criteria, an organization must, among other things:
* have at least one year of business history, as verified by a commercial identity verification service
* have business headquarters located in the United States or Canada"
- Accreditation Criteria
Is this a mistake, or should I contact my MP and a lawyer?
Reduce, reuse, cycle
"No, is too much, let me sum up."
AOL has made a series of poor choices with their email program/system, for years on end. Some highlights:
- They only display the email address of the person sending you email. You have to open the email to find out the name of the sender! (Shouldn't this have been fixed 15 or so years ago when AOL first started letting outsiders send email to their members?)
- If an AOL user wants to include part of your email in their reply to you, they have to copy and paste it themselves, there is no notion of inserting quoted text as with every other email program on earth.
- They put the "Report Spam" button right next to the delete button, and from the user's perspective it does the same thing: email disappears when you click it, with no warning. But on the back-end, AOL counts these against the sender, even if the person did it by mistake (since it is right next to the Delete button, this is very common).
- And the best of them all: plaintext emails to AOL members do not have URLs hyperlinked! They have to copy and paste the URL into the web browser in AOL, or the sender has to format the plaintext as a link, using A HREF, even though everyone ELSE that receives the email in this fashion will see this tag surrounding the URL. If you want everyone to have a nice view of your email and be able to click on the links, you have to format it as HTML.
Now here is where this email tax comes in. Right now, if an AOL member clicks on a link in your HTML email to them, they will get a warning that links are disabled, unless you are in their address book, or you are in the AOL Enhanced Whitelist. You get on this whitelist by having a clean record of sending a lot of email to AOL members, and not being reported too often as "spam." I.e. you're a company sending a lot of legitimate email.
In this case, they click on your links and they just work. If you're not on the enhanced whitelist, and you're not in their address book, they have to click on a "enable links for this email" button for EVERY EMAIL.
Now AOL wants to replace this enhanced whitelist system with the email tax system run by GoodMail.
The problem here is not safety or spammers, it's:
1. AOL's spam detection sucks.
2. AOL's email program sucks.
If they fixed those two problems, there would be no need for an enhanced whitelist or goodmail!
As for their line, "We believe more choices, and more alternatives, for safety and e-mail authentication is a good thing for the Internet, not bad..." Let me ask them, "So why are you dropping the enhanced whitelist?" That's not more choices, that's dropping one in favor of another... another that will provide you with some much needed profit.
I'm sure their motives are pure.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
I work for myself from home for a small survey design and analysis firm I started...No, we're not the annoying surveyors that call you at dinner. We conduct surveys on behalf of trade associations and profesional societies. We contact their members to try to find out what they want out of their association (to which they pay dues) and other information that is of interest to the association and its members. We also always offer a way for those who receive our emails to opt out of future follow-up efforts (and we honor these requests). Only about 1% ask to be removed from these follow up efforts. A significant number of these members use AOL. This could significantly affect my business and the ability of professional societies to find out what their dues-paying members want from the organization. I agree that this is a mask for generating additional revenue for AOL and will actually REDUCE the limited usefulness of an over-priced AOL account. Maybe this will be a nail in the coffin of the AOL dinosaur...
Wait. You think "used condoms" and "recyled viagra" are more productive than trying to change the world for the better (as your group sees it)?
As long as MoveOn and other organizations practice responsible mailing list management, their delivery will be unchanged from the way it is today. So they're not fighting what they think they're fighting.
/. when Hotmail started using Bonded Sender two years ago? How exactly did that play out?
This is a whitelist that bypasses filters, not a whitelist that is the only way to get through. Bulk mailers who don't pay up will still be able to send to AOL, and can still participate in AOL's other whitelists.
And Goodmail's service isn't a matter of "pay and we'll let you in" so much as it's "pay and we'll do a background check to see if you're a spammer, and if you pass our criteria we'll put you in the fast lane." Hmm, that sounds a lot like Bonded Sender and Habeas. Remember the controversy here on
But why let the facts get in the way of a good knee-jerk reaction? We like placing AOL as the big corporate enemy. They often are, of course, but in this case? It's all overreaction and misinformation stemming from mistakes in the initial press.
Check out some of the commentary at Planet Antispam to get some views from the anti-spam community. You'll be surprised to find most of them siding with AOL on this one.
I wonder if we can set up a countdown to how long before AOL starts charging for "per sites visited" or "per IM messages sent"
For regular spam: no change
For companies on the system's good list: allowed past spam filters
So that's a net gain of spam.
GENIUSES
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why is everyone reacting so negatively to this. It's the first step in what is fundmantelly a great idea to elimate spam. namely:
Step1: anything that is not whitelisted by the receiver, and otherwise does not bear a stamp is by definition SPAM.
step2: (Not implemented yet) a universal postage system not an AOL only postage system.
What makes this great is that it can be done very seemlessly and nails the problem. If someone is willing to send you something unsolicited and pay for it then it may turn out to be junk mail but it's not a spam flood since they do have to pay for it. Right now I get junk mail in my snailMail box every day. It's annoying but it's not a flood. Occasionally I do get something interesting (e.g a better deal on DSL, an event in town, a sale at the hardware store, a buck off starbucks). But it's NOT a FLOOD. just imagine if mailing Junk mail cost nothing and printing it cost nothing. Imagine the flood that might happen in snailMail.
So we need a stamp to damp the flood. It's not that we want to elminate unsolicited e-mail. We just need to make it cost the sender a small amount.
The awkward thing about AOL is they have not done step 2.
People are tarring this iniative as though it were AOL trying to profit off of preferred spammer. That could be the case, depending on how high the fee is and who pockets it (why not let the spam recipient pocket it---open this e-mail and you could win an ipod).
But it's win-win. We need the fee to damp spam. and to the extent that AOL makes more money then it's likely they will also lower their costs of access to consumers. Or maybe they won't. Consumers might even pay extra to live in the land on minimal spam.
Move on is painting this as sinister. It's not. Moreover, this policy might needs some tweaks. for example suppose that politcal e-mail got a free pass and commercial e-mail had to pay. I'm not spammed by political e-mail yet since it would backfire.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If a company tries to sell used condoms or recycled viagra
And the best part is, you can find recycled viagra in the used condoms!
all AOL smtp traffic into and out of all firewalls I have domain over. You want an unlevel playing field for email? You got it!
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
No, it means they only certify mailers who practice opt-in list management.
Spam kings who chip in won't get certified because they aren't using opt-in lists.
Average joe mailing lists get the same treatment they receive today.
It doesn't seem at all odd to me that the organizations who ARE paying want to shift some of the cost to the people who are benefiting from it. And I'm 100% behind their effort to do so.
What's a sig?
Some people still do. One of my uncle, a computer illiterate always thought AOL was the internet. So much so that once I convinced him to switch to a REAL isp (highspeed) from his AOl dialup. He still stayed on AOL, just tuneling via his new highspeed instead of dialup directly to AOL, interestingly AOL allows u to do this. You can connect to AOL if u already have another ISP.
It took him good 2 years to figure out he really doesn't need AOL, thats when I said, "I told you so, two years ago".
Everyone is forgetting buisnesses like say EBAY and PAYPAL. I am sure just the shear size that they have a big enough aol email list that aol will want money from them as well. I can see it now!! "EBAY sorry aol users not allowed without surpluss fees due to aol regulations."
Haven't there been rumors for a while that the Post Office was trying to charge "e-stamps" for years because e-mails were cutting into their revenue? Looks like AOL is finally going to succeed at it. It amkes you wonder if the proce for these e-stamps will increase every couple of years just like the price of stamps.
Anyone who pays AOL to send me a certified email has just got to be someone I don't want to talk to.
I heard the same arguments two years ago when Hotmail started using Bonded Sender. Of course, given that sites like Ebay were signed up with Bonded Sender, that would mean not getting your outbid notices. And with some of the names I've seen attached this time around, blocking certified email could be a good way to filter out any real messages from your bank so that you only get the phish.
Actually, the entire controversy has a sense of deja vu about it. I guess it just goes to show two things: (1) People have short memories. (2) Bonded Sender didn't cause the massive problems predicted for Hotmail, or people would remember it anyway.
The fact of the matter is that dealing with SPAM mail costs the large mail providers, and costs them a lot. They may have a majority of their mail infrastructure in place just to deal with the extra capacity issues that SPAM creates.
You might not see all that much spam in your box these days, but the big guys do. It costs them millions.
This may be a despiration move on AOL's part, but it is one way to nip at the problem.
I've been wondering the same -- sender pays seems like a great way to reduce junk mail to easily managable levels. Of all the horrors, the thought that AOL would have a sender pays email system makes me entertain the possibility of getting an AOL account again. Mind you, I ditched AOL probably around 1991 -- Delphi had a 20/20 package: $20 for 20 hours of online time which was much more affordable than AOL's $10 for 3 hrs and $3/hr thereafter. Delphi was text based and AOL had a gui (through GeoWorks) but I didn't really mind -- I was a broke college kid and just wanted some kind of connection.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I don't get what the problem is, though. They can still send email the exact same way they have in the past without paying the fee. Do they want to get paid for sending email, or something? I could understand opposition if you had to pay a fee to send email to AOL users, but last I knew no one was being cut off.
i am a soviet space shuttle
What bugs me about the email tax, and I'm sorry to fall back on a cliche debate term, there's some definite slippery slope potential. For now those who pay bypass the filter. A lot of spam still gets through these filters, however, so the next obvious step is to add more rules to the filters. Pretty soon, as you proposed, the only way to send email is to pay your 0.1 cent, but since spam filters are generally pretty good about filtering out bot spam, paying to pass the filters actually could increase their success rate at getting into people's inboxes to the point where it's worth paying that tiny fee. More so for hand-crafted spam, which obviously accumulates slower.
And I'd wager there would be no cost savings from your ISP. The extra layer of billing penny fractions to billions of email accounts, even handled as a tree structure (consumer 1 > mail provider 1 > mail provider 2; consumer 2 > mail provider 2 > mail provider 1...back and forth ad infinitum), would eat up all the revenue.
No, it's not sinister, but it's misguided. I'm counting on the consumers to weed this one out. AOL has further decreased the likelihood of me every subscribing to their services with this move.
I'm sorry, I was under the assumption that AOL was an authority, and that they were imposing a charge of money to access their otherwise public service.
Of course, the 1b definition fits even without me being facetious.
Now, I'll thank you for hijacking a +5: Funny thread just because it's the first post to the article, simply because you're afraid that if it's any deeper into the comment tree no one will see it, or care about it.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Since (from my understanding) Wal Mart's internet service is basically rebranded AOL, will this be affecting their users as well? I haven't found anything on google, and if this is the case, I'd like to let my wmconnect friends know.
Thanks,
soapee01
This is just the sort of thing that will make websites BLOCK *@aol.com.
Of course, given that sites like Ebay were signed up with Bonded Sender, that would mean not getting your outbid notices.
So in other words, the choices for an AOL member are:
1. Allow AOL to serve them up on a platter.
2. Block those messages (which will probably not be possible since they are paid for), at the expense of losing important messages.
3. Stop doing business with places that pay to have their email "certified".
4. Stop using AOL for email.
And with some of the names I've seen attached this time around, blocking certified email could be a good way to filter out any real messages from your bank so that you only get the phish.
Meh. My bank shouldn't be sending me real messages via email anyway.
Here's the thing... for most people that this will actually impact, it will simply make it harder for AOL users to use whatever your service is.
AND THAT'S THE GOAL.
AOL has fallen on hard times recently. The "walled garden" isn't holding the users in like it used to. AOL users have come to consider that AOL = the internet, for the most part, and lots of them are using AOL as a more normal, but particularly expensive and annoying, ISP.
But that's not retaining existing customers. Once an AOL user finds out that signing up with a more traditional ISP is not only cheaper, but actually provides a far better service, then they tend to switch. AOL subscriber numbers have been dropping for ages now.
AOL wants to stop, or at least slow, that. And that's why they are going to this service. By degrading the rest of the internet to their users, they hope to make their walled garden seem better by comparison. If AOLers have problems with the internet services delivering email to them, then they will tend to blame the service itself, not AOL.
People complaining that this will make things harder for them are missing the point. It's supposed to make things harder for you. Hard enough to make you give up on supporting AOL users. This gives AOLers a bad impression of the rest of the network and keeps them in their walled garden.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I've never actually seen AOL's mail interface, but I'm curious if it's possible to determine if an email/spam was paid for, and then filter it out? So that companies who pay can be guarranteed that their email won't be read.
Really I don't care what AOL does, I just think it would be funny.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Then the AOL subscribers, who attempt to use the net for well established purposes, will stop receiving emails from some sources -- like vendors or lists. They will probably walk when this starts to happen. The subscribers will drive AOL's actions much more than letter writing campaigns.
No, the AOL subscribers will complain to the vendors and lists. If they're with AOL still after all these years, inertia has probably set in and they're unlikely to consider it their problem that the vendors and lists can't send email to them.
Even though I think their decision to charge $ in this way it a bad choice, it's not my threshold of blocking them (AOL). When AOL stops reading email sent to abuse@aol.com (which they occassionally have done), I'll be blocking them for that. Right now, I get _very_ little spam sourcing from AOL, so I haven't had to test that address recently. (It's currently not listed in the RFCi DNSbl.)
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
The fee is optional, but they don't guarantee delivery if you don't pay it. That gives AOL the possibility of extorting MoveOn: "pay up or we'll pretend you're spammers and drop your email on the floor." That would be pretty scuzzy of AOL, since it knows that MoveOn is a valid email-sending organization, but they haven't said that they won't do that. They might just claim, "Gee, there are a zillion valid emailers in the world, and we can't keep track of all of them unless they pay us to do it. Besides, we offered them a non-profit discount."
Personally, I'd say that this is a fine plan until we see AOL using it to do evil, and I'd hold off on the "boycott AOL" campaign until they actually do something vile. But the majority on Slashdot beg to differ.
Actually, by definition, anyone who pays to send you a certified mail has just got to be someone whose list you actively opted-in to.
Interesting that all this vitriol is directed at AOL, yet Yahoo! is planning on using the same service.
As far as I can tell, the main difference seems to be that Yahoo only plans to use them for transactional emails -- order confirmations and the like -- while AOL hasn't gone into much detail on that issue.
"The Left, the Right, the Bad, and the Good(mail)
Many of us have been following the AOL/Yahoo! Goodmail press lately. While the deal was initially announced back in October last year, for some reason the PR engines only began to get going in February 2006. What sparked the sudden change in direction?
While I can't necessarily answer that question completely, I believe it was due to some miscommunication and misunderstanding for which AOL may have even been partly to blame. And for our part, we tried to set the record straight and emphasize that:
1. Goodmail is an optional program for mailers who are interested in participating.
2. Goodmail is AOL's third whitelist (to date) with the possibility for more..
3. AOL's other two whitelists ("AOL Whitelist" and "AOL Enhanced Whitelist") are not going away.".
More: Carl Hutzler's Blog
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but what they're going to be doing is implementing a system where people who pay AOL a fee can bypass their spam filters, right?
So what this means is that:
Why don't they just start throwing bricks through their customers' windows? It'd be a much more efficient way of pissing them off.
No spammer in their right mind would bypass this opportunity. It is a well known, but rarely acknowledged fact in polite circles, that AOL users are just don't understand what is going on. Spammers know that AOL users make up a disproportionally large amount of their customers. AOL knows this too. AOL is sticking it to the spammers. They know the spammers can't resist AOL customers so they are going to start charging them extra money for the "privilege" of access to their "impressionable" customers.
Spammers are really bottom feeders. Lately, they have gotten so fat that the sharks are starting to notice. If the bottom feeders want to stay in the ocean, it will cost them a pound of flesh. Neither the sharks nor the bottom feeders gives a damn about the minnows.
The more people get comfortable with the idea of being charged "postage" for emails the more companies are inclined to charge these fees. Most of these companies seem to be run by scoundrels who think about one thing: the bottom line. If they see a way to make a little extra money they're going to exploit that to its fullest extent.
Right now we see something as benign as what AOL is doing. Even if this ultimately fails, it's only a matter of time before someone else gives it a try. By then there will probably be more people comfortable with the idea. What's one or two cents?
Other companies catch on and the next thing you know everyone is charging for emails. Then the government decides they want to get their hands in the pot. So then we start paying taxes on our emails too.
It seems absurd, but look at all the crap consumers are willing to accept. Look at the mobile phone industry, especially in the US, which basically amounts to extortion. I'm sure there are people out there who would love to apply that model to the internet.
It's only a matter of time.
The only thing AOL is good at is weasly marketing talk.
Maybe now people will wake up and realize that they don't need to pay for AOL and broadband... Or, *gasp* maybe even find another Internet carrier.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
But the majority on Slashdot beg to differ.
That's because everyone here overreacts to anything that could be used for a bad purpose rather than actually seeing if it'll happen. OH GOD RFID TAGS. OH GOD AOL EMAIL EXTORTION. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.
Email delivery has never been guaranteed, though. Ever. AOL has specifically said that nothing will change from the way things are now if you don't pay the fee -- so yeah, I agree that the fuss is way too premature.
i am a soviet space shuttle
AOL is hemmoraghing membership because they long-ago abandoned any pretext of customer service. Their primary business strategy is to make it impossible for current members to cancel their memberships so they can continue to charge their credit cards month after month after month.
Their latest move of charging broadband prices to dial-up customers just confirms how contemptuous they are of mere Internet users.
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I was thinking along similar lines, but in terms of something AOL users could conceivably do:
Block emails from "paid senders". And if possible, bounce them, so the paid-senders KNOW they paid for nothing.
I don't know if this is possible for AOLers to do, but it would sure send a message to the companies that would make such a scheme fly -- the ones willing to pay AOL for the privilege of unfiltered access to every AOL mailbox.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
In response to AOL's controversial proposal to charge Internet users for priority delivery of email, angusmci, owner and operator of at least one mail and web server, announced plans to levy a charge on abuse of his mail forms by AOL customers. Speaking to an imaginary group of journalists assembled in his bedroom, angusmci set out the principles of the new system.
"Like many other website owners, I've grown used to seeing an apparent AOL customer probing my mail forms for security weaknesses. Today he's called WintOlympLovr99, last week he was SusanMcD677, the week before that ... well, you get the idea. And up until now, this AOL customer has enjoyed a free ride. They have benefited from the valuable services that I offer - such as having their probe attempts unceremoniously dropped in the bit bucket and getting their address logged in my log files - without paying a penny. Well, that stops today."
angusmci is pleased to announce that, effective forthwith, access to premium ProbeDiscard services and the popular WriteYourStolenAOLAddressToMyLogFiles feature will only be available to paying customers. A modest charge of $1.00 per probe attempt will be levied, and continued probe attempts will constitute an ipso facto agreement to this charging rate.
AOL users StarlaK8099, charleses3229, mhkoch321, jrubin3546, PeiCanteenMc, battsl1005, bbarnholtz, beacon5919, charleselegb, charleselegbed, SusanMcD677 and WintOlympLovr99 could not be reached for comment at press time. AOL's abuse desk could not be reached at all, at any time.
There is no "email tax".
The EFF, and MoveOn, and other pro-spam organizations (and in the case of MoveOn, spammers), are objecting to the possibility that their spam will not be given extra special preference unless they certify that it's not spam.
Legitimate companies mailing their customers are funding the technology needed to keep overloaded filters (and clueless users) from binning their solicited messages. That's not a tax on email.
It has no effect on regular folks sending email.
Who cares? Only people who have a vested interest in being able to spam AOL into submission.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You've made me nostalgic for the Geo Works days.
A lot of people are misinterpreting what this program entails. It wont cost AOL members money to send e-mails. And it wont cost YOU anything to send e-mails to AOL members. The goodmail service just allows legitimate mass-mailers who have good e-mail practices (non-spammers) to BYPASS all the spam filters and other roadblocks that AOL puts up to filter out spam. This is more like the HOV lane on modern freeways except that you pay for the little sticker to give you access. You can still send the e-mail through normal channels with the possibility of the message being flagged as spam. Paying for the premium service gives you AOL's stamp of approval on the e-mail and quick access to their users' inboxes.
The main issue that the vast majority of people have with AOL's proposed system is that the fee is not a necessary component. A system using the same basic principles can be achieved without introducing an up-front or even a per-email charge. The appeal of email is and always has been the combination of 1) totally free and 2) nearly instantaneous. Kill one of those benefits and, like you said, it's simply making it more like snail-mail, which is going backwards. There are a lot of smaller companies out there who don't use big-name email providers and rely on email to communicate with their customers or subscribers. If they suddenly have to pay an up-front fee or per-email fee, it's an additional cost for whenever they send to AOL users. It may seriously cut into their margins. Why should innocent, smaller companies have to pay so they don't get lumped in with the spammers?
Instead, use the same system but without fees. If a company gets more than a complaint or two "per capita" then revoke their license to send or begin lumping them with spam. If it's a unified system, a few spam emails will make it through in the beginning but they will quickly be blocked for subsequent users. Same effect without the fees, which is all people really want.
Alternatively, keep the money-based system but change the "fees" into "certification deposits." Pay up front to send so many emails per year. If that year passes and you haven't received a significant number of complaints for spam, you get the deposit back. Otherwise, the fee will be split between the company and the users to pay for their wasted time. Just another idea that could still accomplish AOL's supposed mission, without legitimate senders getting screwed over.
KappaStone
sounds a lot like Bonded Sender
There is a slight difference between Bonded Sender and Goodmail; with Bonded Sender, the sender is bonded. That is the simple truth rather than an attempt at slight of tongue humor.
Bonded Sender: Post a cash bond and be charged against that bond for any complaints over 1 per million emails sent.
Goodmail: Pay for every single email sent regardless of complaints received.
Actually, by definition, anyone who pays to send you a certified mail has just got to be someone whose list you actively opted-in to.
Actually, there's nothing in the technology that guarantees this on a per-user basis.
Sounds like the sender registers with AOL, not with the AOL member.
AOL might do this with double opt-in mailing lists, but there's presumably nothing to stop them from allowing advertisers or anyone from sending you unblockable junk. The kind of junk you'd most want to be able to block.
Isn't AOL quickly becoming irrelevant anyway? It seems like I rarely see an aol email address anymore.
01/20/09
I remember the good ol' days on slashdot, when Spam was new.
"If they only charged money, even a fraction of a cent, to send email it would stop the problem!"
GeoWorks was pretty great ... at least in my recollection of it. I remember being so stoked for a WYSIWYG word processor. That sure beat MS Works for DOS.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You may have hit on something there. Maybe the zombie networks are controlled by the NSA? Perhaps they plan to use the frustration SPAM causes to push people to start using a more traceable system, which would simplify their attempts to track "terrorists."
I posted a few possible solutions at AOL Email Tax - Proposed Solutions earlier this week. Basically, I recommend people begin charging AOL users $1 to sign up for otherwise free email newsletters... allowing you money for the actual fee, the credit card fee, and compensation for the extra work to setup an AOL-only list. This should be clearly labeled as an AOL Email Tax with an explanation of why it is charged and a suggestion to contact AOL if they don't like it. For systems where charging isn't feasible... blocking AOL users or warning them they may not receive the newsletter are viable options as well.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
This tip should completely blow away the used condom market once it is made public knowledge...
All they do is turn the condom inside-out and shake the fuck out of it.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Maybe _everyone_ should block "aol" based email addresses. One might argue that this hurts the end-users, but without a collective "action" against "aol-based" email, AOL doesn't seem likely to budge.
If the users of aol begin noticing problems getting their email, they might be prompted change providers -- which ultimately hits AOL where it hurts -- in their pocketbook. Apparently AOL doesn't wish to listen to their users' complaints as there is too much profit to be made in ignoring them. The rest of the "internet" needs to ensure that "aol" gets the message: that such "damage" will not be tolerated.
AOL should be categorized as a "damaged" provider -- much like a provider that runs an open-SPAM relay. Let their email be blocked until they conform to "content-neutral", established, practices.
-l
Most parents will care about where their offspring venture. If a parent can decrease the odds that his/her kids will stumble onto goatse or tubgirl, while availing themselves of what is truly one of the most profound cultural developments since Guttenberg, then that is an appealing proposition.
AOL may have its drawbacks, but shielding children from some of the more unsavory corners of the Internet is a very valuable service.
Filters simply don't work at the scale where AOL operates. They've thrown up their hands and said "Hey, how about y'all self-select!". Can't say I blame them.
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
a bane to subscribers if implemented the way traditional fee-based text message services are? For instance, on my phone, all text messages, solicited or not, I pay for. While it is a screwed feeling, it doesn't hurt the people sending it.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
MoveOn using a cloak of hysteria to misrepresent an issue and trigger an unthinking emotional reaction in their favor?
Who'd have thought it possible?
Broadband brought the hammer and now AOL donated the nails ...
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
I am half owner and webmaster of www.GM-Diesel.com We have a forum for people interested in GM's line of diesel trucks.
Out of 8,150 total users 1,007 have AOL e-mail addresses.
That is almost 12.5% !!!!
I don't think that people like me can just simply "ignore" 12.5% of our user base!
When that number drops below 5% it might be possible. Until then (and I believe it is well on it's way) we all have to deal with it.
Libertas in infinitum
So, AOL can do anything it wants, I don't care.
AOL is like so... 15 years ago...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
...if I don't pay the goodmail tax, I won't be able to send emails to an AOL address.
Big whoop.
Moving on.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
It's not a tax and MoveOn's statement degrades their credibility.
Excellent point.
Non-profits get enough benefits as it is through the US tax system. The non-profits that I care about don't email me, call me, or send me voluminous amounts of mail. I reach out to them because they're worthy causes, not because they're the squeakiest wheels. I wish more organizations understood that and stopped trying to fight for extra rights to harrass me. (see the can-spam and national do-not-call list for examples)
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
It seems frightening to me how many blatant lies we are surrounded with in our media every day. Look at car adds I get in the mail that are flat out lies (A "special" factory program leaves us with a shortage of used vehicles that just happen to be my make and model, so come trade-up), or my local cable company (satelite dishes lose signal in bad weather and DSL service is too hard to use), etc.
Actually As I understand it, Goodmail is supposed to only certify mail senders who use opt-in.
Of course it could all be a big scam, but if it works as advertised it should be OK.
be supported on any discussion boards I run. They will have to fend for themselves, or change the way they access e-mail.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Just skimmed the article -- it took up about 1/3 (if that) of the page. The rest of the page is the usual revenue-generating malarkey.... :(
At this rate, online news sites will become pratically useless -- proping up a scrap of a story with a 'mountain' of ads... (>_<);;;
At least Slashdot isn't that way...yet....