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Yahoo Revives Pay-Per-Email, With Charitable Twist
holy_calamity writes "Yahoo research have started a private beta of a scheme that resurrects the idea of charging people to send email to cut spam. Centmail users pay $0.01 for each message they send, with the money going to a charity of their choice. The hope is that the feel good effect of donating to charity will reduce the perceived cost of paying for mail and encourage mass adoption, making it possible for mail filters to build in recognition of Centmail stamps."
The idea is that a Centmail signature attached to a message would automatically reduce the message's spam likelihood; if enough people adopt Centmail, then receivers would be increasingly able to require a Centmail signature on mail, and killfile mail that lacks such a signature.
In theory, great. In practice, I predict it spiraling out of control as different parties try to "get in on the action" and see a chance to turn a profit instead of just giving the money to charity.
Palm trees and 8
From the paper, section 3.2 http://centmail.net/centmail.pdf :
A related scenario is when a user attempts to reuse a single legitimately obtained stamp to validate a single message sent to thousands of people. This is in fact considered to be acceptable behavior from the perspective of CentMail, similar to the use of blind carbon copy (bcc) for emails.
That sounds like exactly what spammers do - send the same message to thousands of people. So, really, that's $10 for delivery of 1,000 unique messages to unlimited millions of recipients. Good deal!
Problem is this: if you blindly trust Centmail, then it'll be worth it for spammers to pay to send email. Don't believe it? Check your physical mailbox.