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Looking For Mr. Goodmail
John Stith
Staff Writer
2006-02-06
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Spam continues to be a major problem on the Internet. People all over the world receive millions of emails everyday and the vast majority of it is absolutely worthless.
 | | Will Goodmail help reduce spam? |  |
A new company called Goodmail aims to help slow down that spam. With big time players like Yahoo and AOL coming on board, it seems a likely success. The problem is that in order to control spam with Goodmail people will lose some important things too.
With Goodmail the age of the electronic postage stamp has arrived. They've created a system they claim will help reduce junk email and phishing scams. The way it works is for ISP's such as Yahoo and AOL to require email senders to pay up to one cent per email in order to get preferential treatment . For senders who choose not to pay, their messages still go through but must go through spam filters where images and links may be disabled.
While stopping spam and phishing scams are important, there are some holes in this plan. One big question comes in the form of retailer-oriented emails which are permission based. Amazon, for instance, sends millions of emails to their customers. With Goodmail will order confirmations and product suggestions become a thing of the past?
What about HTML formatted newsletters? Most publishers will not be able to send free newsletters if they have to pay a middleman to assure delivery. Doesn't AOL have an obligation to their subscribers to deliver email that a subscriber signs up for?
AOL and Yahoo are framing this as something similar to the U.S. postal service certified mail. Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman told the New York Times, "The last time I checked, the postal service has a very similar system to provide different options. Where you really do get assurance that if what you send is important to you, it will be delivered, and delivered in a way that is different from other mail?"
As the NYT article also pointed out, these companies risk alienating many of their users. When various emails or other notifications sent to the customers because the retailers or even a public utility doesn't pay the fee, some customers will get irritated and the businesses involved will blame AOL or Yahoo. Additionally, how watchful are AOL, Yahoo and Goodmail going to be about companies that pay their fees?
Ted Richardson commented on his blog, "Daily, we see major corporations and financial institutions being spoofed on the Internet. Add in some spam and people become victims of phishing, which leads to identities and financial information being stolen. If criminals are able to use this new service to their advantage, who will suffer from this?"
It's not a bad thing to want to stop spam and phishing scams ... I'm all for it. But how much are online publishers going to be penalized for this new Goodmail plan?
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About the Author:
John is a staff writer for SecurityProNews covering cyber security.
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