Interesting to note,that to try and stop spammers,AOL,and Yahoo,are going to charge a very tiny fee (1 cent),to deliver email that does not go through spam filters:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4684942.stm


Am I missing something here?


Both companies say that delivered email will recieve the stamp of authenticity.But if it has not been through a spam filter,and is supposed to come from a reputable source,what is to stop spammers from "spamming" that reputable source,with fake clone-like copies of messages?
In other words,if you are expecting email from company A,what is to stop spammers,phishing that reputable source,and sending you real-looking "hedders",which when opened,offer nothing more than a years supply of bottles of fake suntan lotion,or ten years of free ice-creams from the Antarctic?

Curlyben

As we all know, spam filters do such and excellent job in removing the spam from our inboxes, that this will surely stop the spam tidle wave. <\sarcasm>

Now which planet are Yahoo and AOL living on as it isn't the same one as me

Do they honestly think this will work or is it just another money spinning idea

Nez

Agreed.Turn off your Firewall,and we guarantee that nothing bad will get through.Only a penny a day.Back to the drawing board boys.Nice bank account though.

NeedKarma

This has been very much discussed at Slashdot.org and Digg. They would lose customers no doubt. This has not gone into effect so it may not happen yet.

ScottGem

I would suspect that both services have developed ways for those paying for this service to be able to authenticate themselves to the mail servers. So I wouldn't worry about spammers spoofing those people.

I don't think this would cause any loss of customers since this is a voluntary program. The recipients aren't getting charged anything. Its just a way for legitimate mailers to authenticate their mail.

LTheobald

Yeah, they won't lose customers as it doesn't affect you unless you say that you want this service.

As for the subject of "will it work" - I'm not sure. I think it is a good idea but like it's been mentioned, surely it's going to be easy for the hackers to get round this. I'm guessing this "stamp" will just be some headers. Well then surely the hackers can fake the headers (as mentioned). Either that or they are thinking of distributing special software that can read the tags (easy for AOL, they'll just shove it in their browser) but then surely that's defeating the whole point as email isn't tied down to a platform, technology, company etc.

NeedKarma

Yea, I didn;t use the correct term I guess. I meant 'users' of their web mail services. What Yahoo and AOL want to do is allow a commercial entity to send bulk html emails to Yahoo and AOL users by paying a price for that service when their bulk emailing would otherwise be tagged as spam. To me that's not a good thing. It would make me think about using my Gmail address or my ISP address as my main instead of my Yahoo address.