| AOL, Yahoo to Let E-Mails Bypass
Filters for a Fee Dan Goodin, Associated Press February
6, 2006 Here is what happens when ISPs get to aggressive with email
filtering. (Mike)
Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers,
Yahoo Inc. and America Online Inc., plan to introduce a service that
will charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox
without first passing through junk-mail filters, representatives of both
companies said.
The fees, which will range from a quarter of
a cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to
weed out unsolicited e-mails, or spam, and identity-theft scams.
In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed that their messages
will not be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients that they
are legitimate.
Both companies have long filtered e-mail by
searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail.
Dulles-based AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to
prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses.
Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail,
a problem for businesses that rely on e-mail.
"We were hearing not only from members but
also e-mail partners that they wanted a different way of delivering e-mail
that would stand out in the inbox and would guarantee them delivery," said
AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of Time Warner
Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months.
Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon said Yahoo will
begin offering a similar service in the coming months.
The plan, while it is optional and will apply
to only a fraction of e-mail senders, amounts to a reversal in the economics
of the Internet because it will charge message senders rather than those
receiving them. The current model has led to the proliferation of
spam and "phishing" scams because the people perpetuating them can turn
a profit even when only a minority of recipients respond, analysts have
said.
AOL and Yahoo said the program, which is being
offered through a company called Goodmail Systems Inc., will target banks,
online retailers and other groups that send large amounts of e-mail.
In exchange for a payment and a pledge to contact only people who have
agreed to receive their messages, the companies will be ensured that their
e-mails are not diverted to spam folders and will not have images or Web
addresses filtered out.
The companies also will receive reports showing
how many e-mails were received successfully. The American Red Cross,
the New York Times Co. and credit report company Experian have signed
up with Goodmail to use the service, Graham said. AOL and Yahoo will
get a cut of the fees charged by Goodmail.
Companies that do not want to pay a fee will
be able to send e-mail to Yahoo and AOL members exactly as they have in
the past, Graham and Mahon said. |