It is clear that you don't have a good understanding of what was announced and I'd be happy to provide additional information if you need it. Suffice it to say, that AOL is not changing email delivery for you; unless you choose to pay extra for the enhancement. You should continue to receive the same delivery you do today and we will continue to provide 24x7 assistance for anyone having a delivery issue.
There is a significant amount of misinformation regarding the topic of AOL, and in this case, CertifiedEmail as provided by Goodmail. AOL announced a partnership with Goodmail in October of 2005 and has been hard at work with the implementation of this new email enhancement.
AOL maintains a whitelist that is intended to facilitate bulk delivery from legitimate mailers. There is no fee for this service and it is widely available for any legitimate entity that abides by the terms and conditions as posted on the postmaster.aol.com website. There is no intention to make any policy or operational change to the whitelist.
The enhanced white list (EWL) was developed several years ago to help facilitate image and link rendering for bulk mailers that were on the whitelist and had exceptionally low abuse reporting rates. It is an automated process that is updated automatically and there is no application process; those that qualify get on until they no longer qualify and all others are excluded. This system was expanded numerous times to facilitate other operational objectives and having served those purposes is being strengthened to close the loopholes that lend it to gaming by those that do not meet the criteria previously set. The enhanced whitelist will remain as long as it is operationally beneficial to do so and in the best interest of our customers.
CertifiedEmail is a new class of email that allows mailers with exceptionally good mailing reputations to go through an accreditation process and when email is authenticated, have that email delivered to the inbox with images and links enabled by default. Additionally, this new class of email would be visually differentiated as such so that customers can recognize the links and images as safe. CertifiedEmail also carries with it a reporting mechanism that reports on successful deliveries providing the mailer with a delivery confirmation in the aggregate. It does not indicate open or read status.
There seems to be come confusion about the enablement of links and images as well. Enablement of links and images by default refers to a link being clickable without any further effort by the customer. An image refers to the actual image being displayed instead of a placeholder.
- When we enable links and images by default, links are clickable and images are displayed unless the customer has configured their mail controls to not display them.
- When we deliver email with links and images disabled, links are non-clickable and placeholders are used instead of the actual image. There are exceptions to this rule; if a user has listed the sender in their address book, the links and images are switched back on. If a user clicks on the "show images and links" command in their mail window, the images and links are switched back on. If a user tries to click on an image or link in the email, they are reminded that images and links are disabled and referred to the command link to enable them.
Inclusion on the whitelist is optional and only necessary for those that send bulk email (consider several hundred per day as bulk for this topic). If you send bulk email to AOL then you should apply for the whitelist; it is free and relatively quick to get completed. The enhanced whitelist is dynamic and changes daily; it is an operational tool that evolves with changing operational needs of fighting spam. CertifiedEmail might make sense for you if you need some degree of certainty beyond what normal email provides and or your ROI outweighs any implementation costs.
We do not see this as a replacement for spam fighting; it is an augmentation to identify email from accredited senders with a good mailing reputation for emails that have passed authentication. AOL users have seen a 75% reduction in the amount of spam and we hope to improve upon that further. CertifiedEmail is not intended to make legitimate marketers pay the way for spammers; they are paying in the form of judicial settlements and legal rulings and ja
Slashdot Mirror
It is clear that you don't have a good understanding of what was announced and I'd be happy to provide additional information if you need it. Suffice it to say, that AOL is not changing email delivery for you; unless you choose to pay extra for the enhancement. You should continue to receive the same delivery you do today and we will continue to provide 24x7 assistance for anyone having a delivery issue.
There is a significant amount of misinformation regarding the topic of AOL, and in this case, CertifiedEmail as provided by Goodmail. AOL announced a partnership with Goodmail in October of 2005 and has been hard at work with the implementation of this new email enhancement.
AOL maintains a whitelist that is intended to facilitate bulk delivery from legitimate mailers. There is no fee for this service and it is widely available for any legitimate entity that abides by the terms and conditions as posted on the postmaster.aol.com website. There is no intention to make any policy or operational change to the whitelist.
The enhanced white list (EWL) was developed several years ago to help facilitate image and link rendering for bulk mailers that were on the whitelist and had exceptionally low abuse reporting rates. It is an automated process that is updated automatically and there is no application process; those that qualify get on until they no longer qualify and all others are excluded. This system was expanded numerous times to facilitate other operational objectives and having served those purposes is being strengthened to close the loopholes that lend it to gaming by those that do not meet the criteria previously set. The enhanced whitelist will remain as long as it is operationally beneficial to do so and in the best interest of our customers.
CertifiedEmail is a new class of email that allows mailers with exceptionally good mailing reputations to go through an accreditation process and when email is authenticated, have that email delivered to the inbox with images and links enabled by default. Additionally, this new class of email would be visually differentiated as such so that customers can recognize the links and images as safe. CertifiedEmail also carries with it a reporting mechanism that reports on successful deliveries providing the mailer with a delivery confirmation in the aggregate. It does not indicate open or read status.
There seems to be come confusion about the enablement of links and images as well. Enablement of links and images by default refers to a link being clickable without any further effort by the customer. An image refers to the actual image being displayed instead of a placeholder.
- When we enable links and images by default, links are clickable and images are displayed unless the customer has configured their mail controls to not display them.
- When we deliver email with links and images disabled, links are non-clickable and placeholders are used instead of the actual image. There are exceptions to this rule; if a user has listed the sender in their address book, the links and images are switched back on. If a user clicks on the "show images and links" command in their mail window, the images and links are switched back on. If a user tries to click on an image or link in the email, they are reminded that images and links are disabled and referred to the command link to enable them.
Inclusion on the whitelist is optional and only necessary for those that send bulk email (consider several hundred per day as bulk for this topic). If you send bulk email to AOL then you should apply for the whitelist; it is free and relatively quick to get completed. The enhanced whitelist is dynamic and changes daily; it is an operational tool that evolves with changing operational needs of fighting spam. CertifiedEmail might make sense for you if you need some degree of certainty beyond what normal email provides and or your ROI outweighs any implementation costs.
We do not see this as a replacement for spam fighting; it is an augmentation to identify email from accredited senders with a good mailing reputation for emails that have passed authentication. AOL users have seen a 75% reduction in the amount of spam and we hope to improve upon that further. CertifiedEmail is not intended to make legitimate marketers pay the way for spammers; they are paying in the form of judicial settlements and legal rulings and ja