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What Happens If You Don't Pay for Goodmail?
If I could ask one serious question of anyone who was defending pay-per-email, or sitting on the fence about it, this would be it: Suppose you sent an extremely urgent e-mail to your doctor or your lawyer, who for the sake of argument you're not able to reach by phone. The recipient's ISP owner happens to see the message before the user retrieves it, and realizes how urgently you need to get it through. So he moves it to the recipient's "spam" folder, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to move it to the recipient's inbox, or they'll never see it.
Does the ISP have the right to do that? If not, why not?
Perhaps you'd say that Goodmail's 1/4-penny-per-message is reasonable, but $1,000 for one message is too much. But then who decides what is "too much"? The marketplace? Then isn't the ISP admin just another player in the market, and $1,000 is what they want to charge? If you don't like it, you can go somewh... oh, wait, you can't, because there's no other way to get through to the recipient. If you ever get through to your doctor or lawyer, they might switch ISPs after they hear what happened, but should that be your only recourse?
The problem with the ISP charging $1,000 to deliver your message is not that $1,000 is "too much", but that they're charging for a service that has already been paid for. If your doctor or lawyer pays for an e-mail address, they're doing so with the understanding that their ISP will make a reasonable effort to deliver the non-spam e-mails that people try to send them. If their ISP then turns around and asks you for $1,000 to deliver the e-mail, then they're trying to double-bill for the same service, and if they block the message because you don't pay the $1,000, then the ISP is cheating the recipient out of a service that they've already purchased. And it's not just the recipient being cheated; if the recipient has an arrangement with you, as your doctor or lawyer would, then the ISP is interfering in their business relationship with you.
Now, if an ISP using Goodmail offers to let you bypass their filters by paying 1/4 penny per message, how is that different from the doctor example? Well, on the face of it, it's different in at least two ways: first, because the ISP is charging "only" 1/4 penny per message instead of $1,000, and second, they're not saying that your mail will be blocked if you don't pay, only that it might be. But are these qualitative differences, or just differences in degree?
Take the cost-per-message. I have a (verified opt-in) mailing list of about 50,000 people that I send mail to twice a week. In the aggregate, it is just important for me to get mail out to those subscribers, as it is for some people to get a single mail through to their doctor or lawyer. Also, in the aggregate, it would cost me about $1,000 per month if the ISPs collectively asked for 1/4 penny per message and threatened to block them otherwise. So is there any real difference between requesting $1,000 to unblock 50,000 e-mails, and requesting $1,000 to unblock a single e-mail, if you're just doing it because you know the sender urgently needs to get them through? (It's not a reflection of the ISP's costs -- downloading and storing 50,000 messages at 3 K each, costs almost nothing, certainly not anything close to $1,000. And again, I would argue it's a moot point anyway, because those services have already been paid for.)
And how much difference is there, really, between saying that a message (or a group of messages) might be blocked, and saying that a message definitely will be blocked? If it's bad for your doctor's ISP to call you up and say, "Give me $1,000 or there's a 100% chance that your message doesn't get through," what if they say, "Give me $1,000 or there's a 50% chance that your message doesn't get through," isn't that at least 50% as bad? You could say that in my doctor example, the blocking was deliberate, but in the case of the spam filter, it's accidental. But if an ISP chooses not to fix problems with its spam filter, then in a way it's still deliberately creating a certain percentage of cases where the spam filter will block legitimate mail, even if those cases occur at random.
There is one more difference between Goodmail and the scenarios I've described, which is that Goodmail not only lets you bypass an ISP's spam filters, it also certifies that you are trusted and not a phisher. If an ISP like AOL controls the user-interface that a user uses to check their mail, it can display the blue-ribbon "CertifiedEmail" icon next to a Goodmail-certified message. In this case, an ISP can plausibly claim that they're letting all legitimate e-mail get through, but they're still offering a benefit to Goodmail senders. The problem with this is that since phishing only works on users who are gullible to begin with, a phish could just as easily display the CertifiedEmail icon in the body of the message to try and gain a user's trust. It's all very well to say that a user should know that the CertifiedEmail icon only "counts" when it's displayed in the inbox, not in the message itself. But a user who knows that, would probably also know that their bank's Web page is not 209.211.253.169. And besides, most users of Comcast, Cox, RoadRunner and Verizon will be using their own mail clients like Eudora which won't display the "CertifiedEmail" icon anyway.
So it seems pretty clear that the main benefit of using Goodmail will be deliverability. And that's the basic Catch-22: If an ISP gives the same deliverability to non-Goodmail-certified messages, then who's going to use it? On the other hand, if an ISP gives better deliverability to Goodmail-certified messages than to other messages (much more likely), then they are to some extent misrepresenting the services they sell to their users, since users expect an ISP to make the best effort to deliver all legitimate e-mails, not just the ones from paying senders.
Goodmail likens their service to FedEx or UPS for "enhanced delivery" of paper mail as a way of getting the recipient's attention. But the difference is that if you're trying to reach your lawyer, then the office complex where he works (or the city that maintains the streets to his house) is providing the service that he expects and has paid for, namely, allowing different companies to deliver stuff to him there -- and because you have different choices, that means FedEx, UPS and the USPS have to compete with each other, and that keeps the delivery prices down. On the other hand, if an ISP blocks you from mailing their customer unless you pay their fee, then the ISP is going against what the customer expects them to do, and it is precisely that betrayal of trust that gives the ISP a monopoly on your ability to reach the customer -- which leads to them charging monopoly-style prices, like $1,000 to receive and store a few tens of thousands of messages.
There is a lot of debate about whether "the market" would fix problems of legitimate e-mail being lost. Esther Dyson's editorial was a classic libertarian defense of the free market as the arbiter of systems like Goodmail: "If it's a good model, it will succeed and improve over time. If it's a bad model, it will fail. Why not let the customers decide?" Actually I don't think the free market does fix most e-mail deliverability problems -- I've been involved in a few business that sent bulk e-mail (to subscribers who requested it and confirmed their subscriptions), and have had conversations with dozens of others, and we've all had problems sending to Hotmail, AOL, and Yahoo, and I've never, ever heard anyone say that their deliverability problems were solved by "the market". (Usually the problems just come and go, and nobody knows why.) But in a way this is all beside the point. Even if the market would stop more egregious abuses, what gives ISPs the right to charge senders for e-mail services that their customers have already paid for?
I actually met Richard Gingras, the CEO of Goodmail, and Charles Stiles, the postmaster of AOL, at a conference in Seattle last year where they were on a panel defending against the Goodmail controversy. They seemed like nice guys who were genuinely blindsided by the criticism that Goodmail had been receiving. It's easy to see the point of view of Goodmail's defenders -- if Bob wants to pay Alice to "certify" Bob, why would it be anybody else's business? It isn't, until it leads ISPs to steer people towards a system where if you want to be treated like a non-spammer, you have to pay -- even if, strictly speaking, the recipient is already paying to receive your mail.
As for the much-vaunted free whitelisting privileges that non-Goodmail senders will continue to enjoy, in the pre-Goodmail era I once found that AOL was blocking some of my mail to their users, so I called their postmaster department and learned the following facts:
- The first person I talked to, said that he checked the logs and our mail was being blocked because we didn't have reverse DNS set up. I thought this was odd because we did have it configured, but I thanked him and hung up.
- Then, I called back and got someone different. I asked them the same question and they said that according to his logs, our mail was being blocked because someone else at our ISP was sending spam. I asked him why they were blocking our IP address, if it was different from the IP of the alleged spammer; he paused and said, "Is there anything else I can help you with?", and this repeated several times as I thought my phone or his headset wasn't working, before I realized he was just being a dork.
- Then, I called back and got yet another person, and this person said that he could see our mail was being blocked because it contained banned content. I was pretty sure that was wrong, because you get a different-looking bounce if you're sending mail that contains a banned string, but I took a note of that anyway.
- Then, I called back and got a fourth person, who said that our mail was being blocked because some of their users had flagged mail from our IP address as spam. He paused for a brief conversation in the background, then came back and added, "This has already been explained to you, sir." I said that since I had gotten four different explanations in four different phone calls, I figured I could just keep calling and tallying the votes that I got for each explanation, until one of them emerged as the winner.
Much later I found out from someone else about the AOL whitelisting program, which I'm currently trying to see if it prevents us from getting blocked. But if none of the people answering the phone at the postmaster department knew or told me about it (and I confirmed that it did exist at the time), how many other organizations or businesses don't know?
ISPs adopting Goodmail say that while Goodmail senders can bypass their spam filters, non-Goodmail senders will continue to enjoy the same deliverability rates that they have in the past. That's what I'm afraid of.
I don't get the big deal about spam. Honestly, you get more junkmail than regular mail on a daily basis, but yet there's no big call to outlaw regular postage and allow only confirmed 3rd parties to send you mail. Why the hell should e-mail be any different? If you want my opinion they should make Internet access a utility just like phone, electric and other things and regulate the piss out of ISPs so they can't start payola practices such as "send us $100 dollars or the e-mail gets it." Spam isn't a bigger deal than junkmail, it's actually less costly, so why do we care so much that we'd let them ruin e-mail?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
... it'd be a shame if somethin' happen to it. Know what I mean?"
why high-volume isp's are signing on to this scam....
fta: At least half of the fees go to the service provider
anything to make a buck. sheesh.
Goodmail is a service for spammers to bypass spam filters for a fee. It is plain to see. By particpating, ISPs that use Goodmail have in effect become spammers themselves. Such ISPs should be avoided like the plague.
"So he moves it to the recipient's "spam" folder, and then calls you up and says: pay me $1,000 to move it to the recipient's inbox, or they'll never see it.
Does the ISP have the right to do that? If not, why not?"
You don't have to use your ISP's email. Not everyone has a bevy of choices for their ISP but everyone on the Internet has plenty of e-mail options. An ISP has the right to do such a thing as far as I can tell but if they actually tried pulling a stunt like that, they'd see how quickly they can get people to jump ship on their email services. I wouldn't recommend tying your email into your ISP anyways. You don't always have the option to take your ISP-based email with you when you move or change ISPs.
And that's not even taking into account that Goodmail is a complete sham. The only people using this will be spammers with money looking to get around your spam filter.
The argument of only reaching a doctor or lawyer by email is an example of how important mail could be blocked, that example is made up and the author explained it, he then went to elaborate on how HE needs to send 50,000 people mail twice a week and explained it would cost him about $1000 to do that each month.
But if you need a different example, what if you ran a large shop and ordered 10,000 chairs to sell, but then realised you made a mistake and only needed 8000... This would cost you a huge amount of money, and if the ISP had access to the email the blackmail could be huge, however it still needs to be paid to save thousands more dollars...
That is, it would have to be paid if it wasn't illegal, but there are going to be people who pay quietly without looking up laws or consulting a lawyer.
What happens if you need to call 911 because of an emergency like you broke your leg or worse? While email isn't 911 it does seem to me that it more and more can and will be used when either the person is unable to use a phone or otherwise does not want to/can't reach the person any other way. The idea to pay a free email service extra to make SURE your mail gets to where it's going seems great but isn't this a silppery slope? Do we really want to start making extra paying people's mail a higher priority then others? "Oh im sorry sir that you missed your child's recital because the email notifying you about it couldn't be bothered to be fished out of the spam folder because X Y and Z clients already payed their "my mail is more important" stipend and we need to be priority to THERE mail." Are we just seeing the slow phase-out of freemail in the longrun?
I looked through a lot of quotes about life and they are all bullocks.
Yep, you are correct about the spam issue.
But the larger issue is whether your ISP can or should be filtering your email (or prioritizing it).
I have no problem with INDIVIDUAL users signing up for such a service.
But when ISP's start signing up, it breeds abuse.
This reminds me of an anecdote ... a gentleman was talking to a young lady and asked her if she would have sex with him for a million dollars. After she thought about it for a moment, she said yes. Then he asked her if she would have sex with him for $50.
"What do I look like, some kind of hooker?" she demanded.
"We've already established that," he said. "Now we're just haggling over your price."
Goodmail has established who the hookers are among the ISP community.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I have a (verified opt-in) mailing list of about 50,000 people that I send mail to twice a week.
Bulk distribution is what RSS feeds are for. If people really want your stuff, they'll subscribe to the feed. Then the recipient is in control. I'm not impressed by people who claim that people need to receive their newsletter / e-mail spam.
This is something I have setup and have had great success with. Aside from the spam filters I get that are obvious "P3NI5" and such in the text, I have setup an auto response to anyone not whitelisted. Basically, if you are someone not on my white list and you send me a mail, it goes into a holding queue and sits for 5 days (like a spam folder but different in my setup). Any mail that goes here gets sent a auto-reply that basically ask them to send me another email with a confirmation string or the option to go to a web form and enter the email address they sent it from. This will grey-list the email and allow one from that sender through. From that point, I can see its grey-listed and choose to white list or remove from all list or blacklist. If I remove it, they have to repeat the process to get it through again.
This is great for spammers. Target their emails better, and htey KNOW that they're going to be seen, and not just silently dumped.
They should be forced by truth-in-advertising laws to call it SPAM-mail.
Better yet, is there any way a user can set it up so that all GoodMail is automatically marked as SPAM? Or better yet, sent back to the sender with a:
That ought to get people to drop GoodMail.
Kevin Smith on Prince
As for the strawman, you just sue your professional and their ISP. I have no doubt the ISP would get hit for actual, consequential and punative damages.
On another level, email should not be used for high-value communications without backup/acknowledgement. The internet just is _not_ reliable. Email is far less reliable than people suppose.
I don't think the free market can solve all the world's problems, but in this case it does have a fair shot.
The dilemma presented in the writeup is that you can't get messages through to someone (your doctor, mailing list recipients, whoever) because their ISP is extorting you. The author then argues that the free market cannot respond because it is the recipient being screwed (by charging others for a service that the recipient has already paid for), but the recipient is unaware of this abuse because they can't receive the messages.
But, that last part is rather unlikely. You will still be able to contact the recipient elsehow: either by paying the silly fee at least once, or by phoning them, or using a recipient email address not linked to the ISP, or by posting something on a web-site.
Take the example of the mailing list. The author worries about the cost of sending mails to thousands of people. So, basically, your mailing-list signup could say something like "We won't send email to people on ISP X" or "We cannot guarantee delivery to ISP X... click here to find out more." If the user really wanted to sign-up to that mailing list, then they will be annoyed by this. Ultimately end-users will find out about what their ISPs are doing, and switch ISPs (or at least switch email providers).
So the recipients will be empowered to change their email provider. And I'm fairly certain this whole scheme will fail for precisely that reason. The end users (senders or receivers) don't get much of benefit from the service--certainly not a benefit commensurate to the cost. So they will not pay the fees, and the scheme will fail. (Notice that some people have called for nominal 'email costs' many times to prevent spam... such proposals never take off mainly because the users of email don't want that hassle or cost.)
I think it will be possible to vote with our wallets, and watch this little scheme die a painful death.
We have employees at our company who use email as a primary communications medium. Most of these employees are off-site and travel more time than not, and when clients call in and ask for them, we recommend that the client emails them.
... and they are complete utter idiots/wankers. This does not even surprise me at all coming from them. While i am sure there exists some people with clue somewhere, someplace within the thing, most of the people manning the phones are ( as per past experience, numerous comments and dealing of associates, other occasions where i've kibbitzed with people having had to deal with them) :
...( silence ) ..." ...And here i am explaining to the bloke on the phone the situation, namely that we are getting "Report cards" without any kind of information as to why people are complaining, with no headers or anything at all to help us.
- Insuficciently trained to deal with admins ( where a postmaster/mail line should)
- Don't have enough knowledge about how email works oin the network
- Limited network training
- No power to do shit all to REALLY help you
- Extremely bullshitty. they don't know what they're talking about, they'll just go with whatever.
This is just like their bullshit "mail report cards" they started sending back in the days. It's condescending, badly implemented ( and hence) mostly useless. ( included original rant on that lower behind supersnip). I think the whole " pay for delivery" is a dangerous slope to get onto for networked mail. At least the Sender Policy Framework makes more sense.
Shit man, it's times like these I don't miss working abuse@some.isp
==(supersnip)==
---(start idiotic message from AOL)---
Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 09:04:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: postmaster@aol.com
Subject: AOL email concerns for isp-where-i-work-abuse.net
To: abuse@isp-where-i-work-abuse.net
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.39
Dear isp-where-i-work-abuse.net,
You are receiving this message via our automated "Report Card" process (which helps analyze AOL's Internet inbound mail) because our available data indicate that isp-where-i-work-abuse has risen above the acceptable threshold for complaints:
Total number of AOL member complaints: 186
AOL takes proactive steps to contact owners of mail servers whose e-mail transmissions are impairing the functioning of AOL's proprietary e-mail system, or causing significant levels of AOL customer complaints.
AOL requests that you take immediate steps to resolve the issues identified in this AOL Report Card. In the absence of a satisfactory resolution, AOL reserves the right to take measures to protect its email network and its member goodwill from any possible damage. These measures may include declining to accept e-mail transmissions from isp-where-i-work-abuse.net through AOL's proprietary e-mail network.
AOL strives to provide the best online experience possible for our members, and we pride ourselves on being intensely focused on consumers and their needs. Email is a core feature of the AOL service, and the proper functioning of AOL's e-mail system is vital to our members' goodwill.
Please review AOL's e-mail policies and guidelines, as well as other technical details concerning e-mail on the AOL network, at http://postmaster.info.aol.com/
--(end message)--
Ooohhh, AOL's proprietary e-mail network. No information that is gonna be any use in determining WHY people are complaining at all. I guess this should not be a surprise, considering this crap is coming in from AOL! So i do the next available thing , i go to the website. Result : No information that is gonna be any use in determining WHY people are complaining at all. But there's a phone number.
Result of calling 1-888-212-5537:
*dials phone*
"The holding time for the next available consultant will be more than ten minutes."
"Thank you for calling America online
*spits water all over desk, workdesk and papers*
(musak)
(an hour later)
"Hello, this is postmaster helpdesk, can i help you?"
REP:"oh, that's because you don't currently have a feedback loop with us."
ME : "huh? but we received your repor
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
Why not? Or rather... why shouldn't it be? I know lots of people who use it for time-sensitive communications (maybe not life-and-death, but certainly for important issues where money is involved). Sometimes the only contact details you have are email. You can phone someone to talk about something, but to send that urgent electronic document, what are you going to do? Email is useful for lots of things, when it works. This scheme on the part of the ISPs basically makes email less reliable and less functional. (In addition to all your previous worries, now you have to think about whether the recipient ISP is using Goodmail?) Why should we be favor of something that makes it less useful, rather than pushing email towards being more robust and truly suitable for emergency-communication
...is a way for someone you've opted in to, to prove it. If I wanted to subscribe to a mailing list, I shouldn't send a mail to listmaster@foo.com. I should send an email to mailfilter@myisp.com with the title "whitelist listmaster@foo.com" which would create a keypair, send the private key to listmaster@foo.com and store the public key in a database on the mail server. Then when foo.com wants to send me an email, they sign it with that key, my mail server verifies it and if it's good, it bypasses the SPAM filter.
Obviously I should be able to do a few other things like "blacklist listmaster@foo.com" which would basicly be an unsubscribe which the server would record, then let the mailing list know the next time they try to deliver mail. Same thing if that token is somehow compromised (and/or shared with partners) which start sending you SPAM. That gives pretty much all the benefits of Goodmail, of course without making money for anyone so I guess it won't happen...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
This seems like an excellent place to remind people that they can opt out of much of that "paper spam". In addition to helping the environment, you're also helping to protect yourself from one vector of identity theft.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
spam
n. Unsolicited e-mail, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk e-mail.
tr.v. spammed, spamming, spams
1. To send unsolicited e-mail to.
2. To send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.
From http://www.dictionary.com/
If people opt-in, it's not spam. These 50,000 members asked to be on the list for hs newsletter.
If he was trying to sell those 50,000 members viagra, or another unreated product, yes, he would be a spammer.
Please understand and comprehend the meanings of words before you speak again.
Why not? Or rather... why shouldn't it be? SMTP is a batch "best effort" protocol. Despite the fact that lots of people pretend it's realtime, it's not. You can also request a return-receipt, but the fact is that the far end client doesn't have to honor your request.
If you want a messaging protocol with assured fast delivery, it's not and won't be SMTP due to the design of SMTP.
Cute, but it's not the same thing as the submitter is commenting about. If you're on the phone with someone who is being difficult (something I'm sure we've all had to deal with), there really is little you can do besides ask to speak with their superior and hope they comply. There is nothing you can do but call back later, hoping to get someone else or to talk with the receptionist's boss and report the treatment you received.
If you stop your thought process there, I can see how you might confuse the two examples as being the same. In both cases, there is little you can do to get your message through immediately (other than pay the price). However, in the receptionist example, I already pointed out the solution: call back later when the asshole receptionist is not there or report him/her, likely getting them fired so you never have to deal with them again. Any future receptionist is unlikely to attempt the same thing.
That's really the heart of the matter: getting a receptionist like the one you describe is a random, chaotic occurrence. Being forced to pay money for every email you send through an ISP is an institutionalized occurrence; it will happen every single time you attempt to communicate with the recipient over that medium. The reason that is a bigger issue than the receptionist, while the immediate effect is the same, is that it is much harder to remedy an institutionalized behavior. The receptionist can be fired and all future communications to that office are no longer burdened with payola. You can call the ISP and complain about the fact that your message is not getting through, but all you'll receive in reply is a canned message explaining about the burden of providing secure communications for their customers that they have so selflessly taken upon themselves and likely insinuating that you may be a spammer because you are unwilling to pay the fee. Alternatively you can call the doctor/lawyer and request they change their service provider because of the situation you experienced. They may even sympathize with you and want to rectify the situation, but simply may not be able to. Switching providers could be a significant expense in time, expertise, and fees, that they may be unwilling or unable to spend. In addition it may be altogether impossible given the limited availability of choice in ISPs (i.e. many places only have the possibility of service from one or two major providers - the ones likely to be using Goodmail).
Like it or not, ISPs institutionalizing a payola scheme is not a trivial matter. It has the potential to seriously hinder the way people use the Internet and has more sinister implications as well - if you seriously believe that they will keep the cost at some fraction of a cent and never increase it, well I can only hope you're one of the few who has the wool over their eyes.
How long will it take for spammers to add a fake Goodmail header to all of the email they send?
Remember that Goodmail isn't charging senders to get their mail delivered. The charge is to bypass the normal processing that the receiving ISP does to all e-mail and deliver directly into the recipient's inbox. If you don't pay Goodmail to get your mail certified then it still gets delivered, it just gets handled as normal everyday mail. Now if the receiving ISP starts dumping everything not flagged by Goodmail into the spam folder automatically that'll be another matter, but my problem there would be with the ISP and not Goodmail (unless Goodmail was telling the ISP to do this, but they aren't). That problem is one I'd have to take up with the recipient, though, since I'm not a customer of their ISP. But as long as it's the receiving ISP's choice how to handle Goodmail-marked mail, Goodmail and senders can do whatever they please as far as I'm concerned.
For myself, I'm a firm supporter of the ISP's right to filter incoming e-mail however they want. I like the fact that my ISP applies some pretty effective spam filters. I also like the fact that they're unlikely to bypass that filtering just because of a Goodmail signature on messages. The only thing I demand from an ISP is that they make it clear to customers what sort of filtering they do, so customers can decide whether they agree with it or not.
If their spam will be guaranteed to be delivered, and they choose to pay for it, what good is a spam filter on a server for?
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
How can the parent of this, and its parent both be modded to +5 Insightful, when they are opposed? I would think one is insightful and the other is not.
I always thought the idea of the moderation system was to push trolling down to the bottom and encourage an interesting exchange of ideas. You seem to be implying that there can only be one insightful way to comment on a subject. In any debate, proponents of each side might have valid and insightful points to make. True discussion of ideas shouldn't lead to binary outcomes.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
If your doctor wants to use an ISP that restricts his email, that's his business. You can certainly go to another doctor, but you aren't his ISP's customer (he is), so if he's happy with an ISP that charges people to send him mail, that's his call, not yours. If the ISP wanted to only accept mail from domains that start with Q, then it could do so - your doctor might have grounds to complain, especially if they didn't inform him of it, but you certainly don't - his service, his payment, his call.
Goodmail is in essence creating a new way for "legitimate businesses" like coke, nike or mortgage lenders to spam people. Let's not be confused here, these are bulk email rates not for individual to individual. Businesses are really desperate for ways to reach people with their marketing, and sending unsolicited email gets too much backlash and negative attention. Many companies get big money from other companies wanting to reach customers who have opted into their mailing lists, the ISPs and email providers want a piece of that action.
This isn't in any way meant to help email subscribers or recipients reduce junk email, it is meant to increase junk email.
"magical clicky clicker?" Sounds like a certain commander took the brown acid.
The only people who know and understand how unreliable it is as a service are the people administering it, not the majority of the end user population.
I actually think most people DO know it's unreliable. Who hasn't had the experience of "I sent you an email about subject X, did you get it?" and received NO as a reply? Anyone that thinks email is reliable isn't really paying attention.
AccountKiller
Preach on brother man! =) If anyone reading this is interested in the subject of marketting and how to recognize the ploys, I highly recommend "Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini.