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ISPs Starting To Charge for 'Guaranteed' Email Delivery

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-gare-on-tee dept.

Presto Vivace writes "Under the guise of fighting spam, five of the largest Internet service providers in the U.S. plan to start charging businesses for guaranteed delivery of their e-mails. In other words, with regular service we may or may not deliver your email. If you want it delivered, you will have to pay deluxe. 'According to Goodmail, seven U.S. ISPs now use CertifedEmail, accounting for 60 percent of the U.S. population. Goodmail--which takes up to 50 percent of the revenue generated by the plan--will for now approve only mail sent by companies and organizations that have been operational for a year or more. Ordinary users can still apply to be white-listed by individual ISPs, which effectively provides the same trusted status.'"

4 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Re:finally by mikelieman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're not getting junkmail in your reality-based mailbox, then?

    This has NOTHING to do with stopping Spam.

    This is all about generating revenue from Spam.

    --
    Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
  2. And this will help how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So the spammers who use botnets will just cause the hijacked computer's owners to pay thousands in email fees?
    I can imagine the new "training" course at the grade schools:
    Don't download music because you'll get sued for thousands of dollars by the RIAA and then have to pay thousands of dollars because a "virus" sent out emails from your computer!

  3. Re:Fighting spam? by tacocat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If he tags what you sent as confirmation to his request, what do you think the chances are that they will also tag your newsletter?

    A lot of AOL users tag messages as SPAM when they don't want to see them anymore. It's easier than opting-out and so they abuse the process. They have no repercussions to their actions.

    But a lot of users do this. I see it in my house where I run my own mail server and my own spam filter. It's a bayesian filter so you have to tell it when it was wrong. Wife won't tell it anything but she complains about the spam she's getting. Can't help her. She's being obstinant and dumb.

  4. Dubious statistic by asuffield · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to Goodmail, seven U.S. ISPs now use CertifedEmail, accounting for 60 percent of the U.S. population.


    This is probably true as stated, but almost meaningless. Each of those ISPs will be counting the number of users that have email accounts with them, and then they just added up those numbers. The problem with this is that many users have more than one email account and don't use the one provided by their ISP - a large chunk of that 60% probably uses yahoo, hotmail, or gmail. Many people will also have another account provided by their employer.

    It is not particularly useful to count email accounts as a fraction of the US population.