Tech | August 14, 2009 | 59 comments

Will You Pay A Penny For Every Email You Send?

source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/08/yahoo_penny_email/

Image
sespian
Yahoo’s researchers want you to voluntarily slap a one-cent stamp on your outgoing e-mails, with proceeds going to charity, in a bid to cut down on spam. Can doing good really do away with spam, which consumes 33 terawatts of electricity every year, not to mention way too much of our time?

The idea behind CentMail is that paying to send e-mail — even a single cent — differentiates a real e-mail from spam blasts, and thus, spam filters can be adjusted to let the stamped mail sail right through, according to a report from New Scientist. Users would get to choose which charity benefits from their penny missives, which the researchers hope will convince people to pay CentMail for something that’s currently free.

Anti-spam companies estimate that spam comprises more than 90 percentof e-mail, a situation explained, in part, by the lack of real expense in sending e-mails. The idea is to create a class of certified e-mail which will allow spam filters to concentrate on, well, messages touting “Rolexes”, Viagra and very cheap copies of expensive software.

Users would pre-pay, and then a stamp would be automatically added to each outgoing e-mail (presumably, no licking is necessary) and the proceeds would go to the approved charity of the user’s choice. Centmail is currently in a private beta, but you can add your e-mail address (for free!) to be notified when it launches.

This is not the first attempt to add certification and/or money to the e-mail environment to cut down on spam. Microsoft has its own research project, while AOL’s Goodmail successfully offers anti-spam protection to large marketers.

But perhaps the most widespread authentication solution is the Sender Policy Framework, which helps prevent spammers from pretending to send e-mails from a company’s domain name — but is largely invisible to every day users, even if, as customers of services such as Gmail, they use it every day.

It’s also not clear how the system will prevent spammers from sticking stamp codes in their e-mails to pretend they paid the tax. That same problem doomed a company called Habeas, which in 2004 offered legitimate users a copyrighted haiku to stick in their e-mail headers, with the threat to use the heavy penalties of copyright law to crack down on abusers.

That didn’t stop the spammers.

It’s not clear how much the proposal would help, however, since so much of the spam is now sent using botnets, which are networks of zombie PCs whose owners have no idea their computers are part of a massive spamming organization.

Considering how much legitimate e-mail ends up in the “dead letter office” of today’s spam filters, consumers’ tendency to prefer free stuff, and the vastness of the spam problem, perhaps this is better thought of as anti-anti-spam filter protection for real people, rather than as a true anti-spam solution.
  1. groups:
    Community,   Tech,   Current Tonight,   Upstream,   1 more
  2. tags:
    Technology,  Google,  Yahoo,  Spam,  4 more
  3.     
    |

59 comments // Will You Pay A Penny For Every Email You Send?

  • EmperorThan
  • EdJoyProductions
    • 0
      EdJoyProductions  

    • Find a way to only charge the spammers and I will jump on that band wagon. And while I am deleting without reading, I get to pick the charity that they are paying for.

    • 2 years ago
  • sirpaulmcdarkney
  • Karmacowboy
  • twenty7w
  • dzn_daniel
  • nazbags
    • 0
      nazbags  

    • Maybe everyone can give their pennies to Amnesty International, so they can keep fighting for people like Shi Tao who were handed to the Chinese government by the jerks at Yahoo

    • 2 years ago
  • MirrorLake
    • 0
      MirrorLake  

    • I don't get any spam at all with Gmail. Yahoo shouldn't charge, very few people would use the service.

      They should spend more time cracking down on spammers... Google, it seems, has done a brilliant job thus far.

    • 2 years ago
  • DEBGLO
    • 0
      DEBGLO  

    • It might be a good way for charities to receive needed funds. Perhaps putting a 1-cent stamp on the 1st 100 e-mails you send every 30 days would be an alternative. Then everyone would contribute $1.00 each month to their favorite charity. It would be awesome and make us feel good to help!

      Just a thought.

    • 2 years ago
  • ayashe
    • 0
      ayashe  

    • I'm with Google so this wouldn't really affect me. Giving money to charity is a good thing, but I don't trust Yahoo, since internet companies like them have long been wanting to charge for email. It might start out a penny for charity in the beginning, but then it would be 1 penny for charity 1 penny for Yahoo, and how long before it would become 5 pennies for charity 20 pennies for Yahoo, and so forth.

      It also wouldn't do a thing to stop spam. Yahoo was researching something, but it was how to make more money, not how to end spam.

    • 2 years ago
  • lordsbassman
  • MilchMann
    • 0
      MilchMann  
    • lordsbassman:

      Seriously... you do not even know what measures they would take to implement this yet. No, metasploit and the other packaged and scriptable kiddie toys would take quite some time to allow you to do anything... I am going to have to conclude that the shear arrogance it takes to state something like that disqualifies you from having the competence or capability to pull of something like that off.

    • 2 years ago
  • lordsbassman
  • RonenA
  • fiveholecc
    • 0
      fiveholecc  

    • I am on board for a charitable payment of a penny per e-mail if a business is sending out advertisements. I am doing the math and it comes out to a metric ass-ton of pennies every hour. Even the toll roads would have trouble competing...

    • 2 years ago
  • Logos51891
  • fdsooner
  • fdsooner
    • 0
      fdsooner  

    • It's paid by someone...of course it's free wifi but the place that has the access point pays a bill...it costs 'someone' money for you to use the Internet whether it's you or a free wifi provider

    • 2 years ago
  • MilchMann
  • dariusvons
    • 0
      dariusvons  
    • fdsooner:

      somewhat relavant, and very similar, have you heard anything about how much it costs cell phone providers to have text messaging? it's nearly free... it only cost the providers (t-moble, sprint....) fractions of a cent to send hundreds to thousands of texts, then some of these companies charge for each individual text... making tons of profit from it. I think the net and wifi is very similar, I'm sure of it... however nobody will release the information on it. I'm sure the actual costs are so minute that charging anything (a single penny even) is still going to make a profit.

      just think about it. if yahoo can host and send messages at a cost of thousands to the penny, then they charge only a penny for each one... that's a ton of profit. but that's if the costs are equivalent to cell phone texting.

    • 2 years ago
  • evready
    • 0
      evready  

    • I would gladly pay a penny on every email I send out but, It needs to be a two way street here. They'd have to pay me one penny on every spam that gets through.

    • 2 years ago
  • fdsooner
    • 0
      fdsooner  

    • No way dudes! Everyone says the web is free... it's not...it costs a monthly fee...I believe it's called an Internet bill! I pay mine monthly (sometimes)...why else do you pay this bill except to use the web...it's not that hard to see that it's not free...I say good day

    • 2 years ago
  • MilchMann
    • 0
      MilchMann  
    • fdsooner:

      What? No it does not, go to the library, a local courthouse or city hall... some cities such as Chicago have free wifi through out the city... and there are projects to implement it on NYC transit and other public places, they for the most part all allow free internet access, there are tons of other examples too. If you pay for the internet it is by choice, not by necessity... you do not even need to own the computer.

    • 2 years ago
  • Conniepae
    • 0
      Conniepae  
    • fdsooner:

      I don't go to the library for free Internet. I pay it monthly! It's not free for me by choice, correct. I won't pay for email, by choice either.

      Once the door is open to charging for email, they will all start charging and it won't be going to charity. It will be going into the pockets of corporate internet providers.

    • 2 years ago
  • fdsooner
  • ismaelo44
  • galwayman
  • GrinningSatyr
  • _allenp
  • ii386
    • 0
      ii386  
    • galwayman:

      or the part that it was going to charity? haha. I think this is a pretty cool idea to give a little bit of money away without thinking about it. It is really insignificant but it could all add up.

    • 2 years ago
  • _allenp
  • Brazil617MA
  • galwayman
    • 0
      galwayman  

    • This sucks! sending email should be free hell the internet should remain free! you just knew it was coming! This will hurt elderly,and low income people! we should all mount a campaign to stop this from happening! I agree that stopping spam is vital but not by charging the common user like you and me instead go after these rich scum companies who send spam!

    • 2 years ago
  • Conniepae
  • dariusvons
    • 0
      dariusvons  

    • no worries, I don't use yahoo for anything anyway. and as soon as I have to pay for gmail i'll just drop that account and start a new one on another free site... that's capitalism baby.

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
  • clownpuncher
  • TheJerryMadden
  • mykuh
    • 0
      mykuh  

    • I would not pay.

      Besides, I use gmail. I get 1000 times less junk in gmail than my yahoo or hotmail got daily.

    • 2 years ago
  • fdsooner
  • codewizard
  • Apocalipstick
  • TekkenRaven
  • TekkenRaven
  • GodsnLiberals
  • codewizard
  • codewizard
    • 0
      codewizard  

    • And Yahoo wonders why it's floundering.

      It's funny that Yahoo seems to have the biggest problem with SPAM, followed by Hotmail (which SPAMS Microsoft email, on second thought). GMail doesn't have a problem.

      There are easier ways to combat SPAM, trusted senders, ask back, digital signing, encrypted receipt only, and the list goes on and on.

    • 2 years ago
  • quanta
  • good_stuff
    • 0
      good_stuff  

    • Yahoo clearly is on the wrong path. Unless people are spamming from a yahoo account, how would stop any spam? I guess everyone would have to start charging for email to make it work. Stupid

      On a side note, does anybody actually have a problem with spam? I certainly don't get much (maybe 1 per 6 months), but then again I am very careful about where I type in my real email address. I Just setup a yahoo email accout, so if a website is questionable but still requires me to enter an email addy I enter my junk yahoo email. Doesn't everybody know to do this?

    • 2 years ago
  • MilchMann
  • Peacey
  • MilchMann
  • dariusvons
  • SupaDawg
    • 0
      SupaDawg  
    • good_stuff:

      I actually get a fair amount of spam from yahoo mail. However my ISP usually flags it as spam and outlook takes care of the rest, but i do see a disproportionate amount coming from yahoo (vs gmail/hotmail etc)

    • 2 years ago
  • msumonica
  • QuestionGeek
  • TekkenRaven
  • iamfree
more from Tech:
from the community

top videos