New Service Would Charge E-Mail Senders
By DAN GOODIN, AP Technology Writer
1 hour, 57 minutes ago

Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would 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 Sunday.

The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won't be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients they're legitimate.

Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. 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, making life difficult 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 spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of New York-based Time Warner Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months.

Company spokeswoman Karen Mahon said Sunday Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will begin offering a similar service in the coming months.

The plan, while it's optional and would apply to only a fraction of people sending e-mail, amounts to a reversal in the economics of the Internet because it would charge message senders rather than those receiving them. The current model has led to the proliferation of spam and so-called phishing scams because the people perpetuating them can turn a profit even when only a minority of recipients respond, analysts have said.



The companies also would 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 would get a cut of the fees charged by Goodmail.

Companies that don't 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.

In a bid to protect its members from e-mail fraud and phishing, and to offer consistency to commercial e-mail senders, AOL today will begin implementing Goodmail's cryptographic CertifiedEmail program and phasing out its IP-based Enhanced Whitelist.

As part of its e-mail security practices, AOL blocks the display of images and hyperlinks on most high-volume messages, except if senders are on the AOL Enhanced whitelist and maintain very low complaint rates. Beginning today, AOL will also allow senders who have undergone accreditation through Goodmail to display images and hyperlinks by default. Goodmail charges accredited companies a fraction of a cent per message sent.

In addition, AOL will add a "trust symbol" to messages sent by Goodmail's CertifiedEmail senders. It will appear in the inbox and the message window, so members will understand that a sender's identity and reputation have been verified.

"Our focus and goal here is to provide a safer and more secure environment for our consumers, and restore some trust in the e-mail inbox," Charles Stiles, AOL's postmaster, told ClickZ News.

AOL's current Enhanced Whitelist program works by classifying senders based upon their IP addresses. To qualify, senders submit to AOL the IP addresses from which they send e-mail. Since many large senders use more than one IP address, it's possible for an AOL member to see images on a sender's e-mail one week and not the next.

"If they get a message from a sender that has images and links enabled one day, and another one the next day where they're not, they tend not to trust that so much, or think there was an error. It sends an unclear message to the consumer," Stiles said.

In addition, the IP-based system is easier for spammers to game, since they can send low volumes of opt-in messages in accordance to the guidelines until the address is whitelisted, and then send a large amount of spam all at once before the address is blocked.

"The amount of accreditation that's required to get on the Enhanced Whitelist is not really appropriate for the level of permission we're giving here. With Goodmail, they're able to certify the entity as a whole, not just a certain IP address. Their testing and certification processes are much more rigorous than what an individual ISP can do in a scalable way," Stiles said.

The Enhanced Whitelist program will be phased out, first by lowering the complaint threshold in April to reduce the number of IP addresses in the program. The program will be eliminated entirely at the end of June, when all senders who have not yet done so will be required to sign up with Goodmail to retain previous sending privileges.

According to Stiles, senders are amenable to the idea, because they gain a level of consistency. Using Goodmail's CertifiedEmail, senders who maintain high standards are more likely to have all of their messages delivered, with links and images enabled, than they are under the current IP-based system, Stiles said. Senders will also gain access to message-level data confirming inbox delivery or detailing error reporting in the event of non-delivery.

"We've seen a good response from many senders who recognize the problems in the e-mail ecosystem today," Richard Gingras, chairman and CEO of Goodmail, told ClickZ News. "They very clearly understand that their brands have been damaged by phishing attacks, that they're having a hard time getting their messages delivered, that consumers don't trust their messages. We're confident that over time we'll see significant adoption by senders of all types and stripes."

CertifiedEmail will cost senders a fraction of a cent per message sent, which Gingras said will be offset by the ROI it generates in the form of assured delivery, improved open rates, and enhanced click-through rate. Rates have not been set in stone, and Goodmail expects to offer senders significant discounts through 2006 under its charter program, he added.

Each message sent through the Goodmail CertifiedEmail service is embedded with a cryptographically-secure token. When a token is detected by a participating ISP, the message is delivered directly to a recipient's inbox and identified as a CertifiedEmail message.

CertifiedEmail imprinting capability is available through e-mail technology providers like Port 25, StrongMail, ColdSpark, and Sendmail, as well as several e-mail service providers. On the receiving end, Yahoo, which like AOL announced a deal with Goodmail in October, is expected to begin implementing CertifiedEmail in its mail service in the coming weeks to bypass certain volume and content filters to allow messages to automatically reach the user's server-level inbox.

"This is a case where everyone can do well by doing good," Gingras said. "We create a safer experience for consumers, we provide qualified senders with a secure method of obtaining these kinds of privileges, and we take some of the cost burden of cleaning up the inbox off of the ISPs."