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Yahoo Revives Pay-Per-Email, With Charitable Twist

Posted by timothy on from the penny-post-sans-post dept.

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."

6 of 287 comments (clear)

  1. How Exactly Does This Fight Spam? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Subtitle of CentMail:

    Do Good. Fight Spam.

    So it sounds like an 'opt-in' program for doing otherwise would be suicide by a mail provider. And since it's opt-in, I highly doubt the spammers will be doing the opting. So unless your penny is going to an anti-spam organization, how are you fighting Spam?

    Also, I'm not too clear on how this would work. Wouldn't it require a certificate-like central authentication server? And wouldn't this increase in traffic just exacerbate the situation of too much traffic? Especially if all Spam starts to come with fake 'stamps.'

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:How Exactly Does This Fight Spam? by FlyingSquidStudios · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It seems to me that the only way to truly insure that the receiver gets 100% spam-free mail is to intercept and sort it before it's received with humans doing the sorting. Even the most robust spam filters get overcome fairly regularly. I know I don't want anyone reading my mail but me.

      --
      http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
    2. Re:How Exactly Does This Fight Spam? by Darkness404 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      However there are -tons- of legitimate reasons to have more than one e-mail account. For example, a business might want to have one for each employee, so there is one, another would be a personal e-mail, and another one would be an "internet" e-mail for occasions where you might not want to reveal your real name (forum registration, etc). Plus there are many occasions where you forget either a username or password and when you try to register for a new account it helpfully tells you there is already an account for the e-mail address yet won't send you the username. Another reason is for convenience, I used Yahoo mail for a while but then I realized that I might as well get a Gmail account because I searched Google, had Google as my homepage and never used Yahoo except to check mail.

      And also this will create problems with students/poor people who while they can afford the "stamps" might not have a credit card to buy them. And finally, this is unethical because the cost of a single message is -far- less than one cent, similar to how US carriers charge 10 cents or more per text message when it costs them nothing to send.

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      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  2. $10 for guaranteed delivery to 1,000 users? by ickleberry · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now here's something both the spammers and the ISP's will love. I presume somewhere in their long-term plan is a means of getting rid of all those pesky renegades who run their own email server and don't opt into this scam

  3. Gosh. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm glad that goodwill and fuzzy feelings are able to cut transaction costs; because they'll be the real killer at $0.01 a pop.

    I assume, because of this problem, that they'll either be billing you when your tab reaches some worthwhile value, and trusting you in the meantime, or forcing you to buy in large blocks ahead of time(which would be super annoying, goodwill or no).

  4. Okay, I'll play this game. by Ollabelle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll set myself up as a charity, and have the system pull money out of my account, and put into the my other - er, the charity's - account. Now all my spam is blessed.

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    Ibid.