Cheap tramadol Buy tramadol Online casino Tramadol prescription Buy cialis Cialis levitra High roller casino Savings account payday loan Zovirax Augmentin Buy xenical Meridia Consolidate credit card debt Prilosec Best poker software Xenical Best online casino Pay off debt Buy propecia online Credit card debt Debt negotiation Viagra gel Consolidating debt Term life insurance Amoxicillin rash Purchase avandia Car and insurance Classic car insurance Womens Health Zoloft Protonix Prescriptions Funeral director Oncology Pathology Accutane Business credit cards Hydrocodone Vicodin Hydrocodone buy online Insurance Rivotril Percocet Timeshare Movies Phentermine to fla Forex broker Norton Office Vonage Domain names Adult dating Hot Online degree Equifax credit report Cytotec Hair Commodity trading Care Aricept 

Tim Lee

A Plan That Doesn’t Fight Spam

This proposal by AOL and Yahoo! to charge postage for bulk email doesn’t strike me as a terribly good idea. It’s pitched as an anti-spam tactic, but that doesn’t seem right. Spam will still be spam. It will continue to be filtered out as best as AOL is able using traditional spam filters. Some spam will continue to get through, just as it does now.

What AOL and Yahoo are doing is attempting to take a cut every time a legitimate business wants to communicate with its customers. For example, I’ve given Apple permission to send me occasional emails: I like their products and don’t mind an occasional sales pitch. I know that if I get tired of those emails, I can banish them with an “unsubscribe” request. Apple values its relationship with me and wouldn’t risk my anger by sending emails after I’d asked them to stop.

I don’t see how I benefit in the slightest if my ISP begins charging Apple for the privilege of sending me those emails. To the contrary, by discouraging some companies from offering bulk-email subscription services, I would actually be made worse off if the policy is enforced aggressively. Smaller companies, non-profits, and others on tight budgets might decide that they simply won’t deliver their emails to Yahoo and AOL email addresses.

Whatever benefits this plan might have for consumers (so far, I’m not seeing any), fighting spam is not one of them. While I fully support their right to charge for the valuable service they provide, it seems misleading to pretend this plan is somehow for the benefit of their users, rather than simply a way for them to generate more revenue.

February 7, 2006 | Comments |

  • chuck
    want to receive mailing lists? pay for it!
  • Joe
    I really don't think this is as big of a deal as it is being made out to be. Here's how I see it:


    If AOL and Yahoo do anything that annoys their customers (like blocking legitimate mail from Apple or subscribed mailing lists), those customers will leave. Likewise, if AOL and Yahoo customers start getting more unsolicitated spam from sources who have paid the companies for access to those customers' mailboxes, it is equally likely that an exodus of users will occur.


    If I'm a competitor to AOL and Yahoo and I want to gain ex-AOL and ex-Yahoo customers, I simply implement a saner policy regarding spam. (The incentive here guarantees that the Internet's mail system won't turn into another version of the USPS).


    Look at it this way: AOL and Yahoo are embarking upon a massive experiment in spam-avoidance / spam-legitimization. And the only real potential cost is to their own userbases.


    I, for one, will look on with some mixture of disinterest and amusement. I mean, AOL and Yahoo email are already in the slum of Internet email services. This, worst case, only entrenches them further into that 'market.'

  • Tim
    Oh, I agree that this isn't a problem from a policy perspective: there's plenty of competition, so if AOL and Yahoo want to piss off their customers that's their business. I just don't think it's a good business strategy.
  • Well, in their defense, they are handling incredibly large volumes of email everyday. The amount of computing power and bandwidth which they probably require to function is probably getting very far up there in cost.

    Lately I have been looking to see if I could find something like RoundCube or Zimbra (AJAX webmail clients) that support POP3. There's something to be said about hosting your own email service, and sometimes it can be far better.
  • Yaron
    No, it won't help to fight spam. And yes, it does mostly seem like just a way for Yahoo and AOL to make a profit out of legitimate communications.

    But there is a potential benefit to some customers. Mainly, those who are bombarded by spam instead of just having enough to cause a nuisance. If you have a few messages a day, that's not that big a problem. But when facing 60-200 spam messages a day (And I know a few people who do, and who for some reason don't just start clean with a new email address) most people will tend to trust the spam filters completely, and not manually check for false positive.
    Meaning that wanted messages, purchase confirmations, receipts, notification about service renewals, etc, may get lost if the spam filter mistakes them. And spam filters are far from perfect.

    From what I understand all that the paid messages get is a guarantee that they won't get into the spam folder, but be processed as non-spam message. So for companies who have customers swamped by spam, this could be a good idea, and could benefit those customers.

    Now, should companies pay just to reach those customers who can't control their email address? That's indeed an issue, and open for debate.

    There sure are are *many* others problems with the idea, like the incentive for Yahoo and AOL to make their spam filters worse, multitude of other email providers that may join making life very complicated for a company that's even willing to pay for that, and many more.
    *But* it's not as if there's no potential benefit whatsoever, as you claim in this post. It's just a benefit that doesn't apply specifically to you, or to me.
  • short url
    44dd9be67178 Hi short url short url
  • Roundup: Woods wins award...
  • ed4d6dd518ec Nice site http://monstercocks.da.cx monster cocks sex
    http://pornoo.da.cx free porno movies
    http://handjob.da.cx handjob
    http://hotmodels.da.cx hot models fucking
    http://howtomasturbate.da.cx how to masturbate
    http://youngboys.da.cx young boys nude
    http://spanking.da.cx spanking
    http://nudeteen.da.cx free nude teens
    http://hardcoresex.da.cx free hardcore sex
    http://pussyfucking.da.cx watch pussy fucking
  • 81e31de21f46 Very good tramadol tramadol
  • 81e31de21f46 Great work tramadol tramadol
  • 81e31de21f46 My homepage tramadol tramadol
blog comments powered by Disqus