AOL, Yahoo offer to bypass spam filters for $$$
AOL and Yahoo, two of the world's largest e-mail service providers, plan to charge a fee to send email directly to user inboxes, without passing through junk-mail filters.
Senders have to pay from a quarter of a cent to 1 cent per mail, to have their messages flagged as certified.
New York Times reportes - "The Internet companies say this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services."
The companies stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.
Goodmail Systems, a California-based company, will begin certifying email on behalf of AOL in the next two months. It will also collect the "electronic postage" and verify the identities of the senders, who will agree to email only those people who have agreed to receive their services.
Yahoo has said that it will also try out Goodmail's system in the coming months, but has yet to decide how paid e-mail will be differentiated from unpaid.
AOL and Yahoo, two of the world's largest e-mail service providers, plan to charge a fee to send email directly to user inboxes, without passing through junk-mail filters.
Senders have to pay from a quarter of a cent to 1 cent per mail, to have their messages flagged as certified.
New York Times reportes - "The Internet companies say this will help them identify legitimate mail and cut down on junk e-mail, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users of their services."
The companies stand to earn millions of dollars a year from the system if it is widely adopted.
Goodmail Systems, a California-based company, will begin certifying email on behalf of AOL in the next two months. It will also collect the "electronic postage" and verify the identities of the senders, who will agree to email only those people who have agreed to receive their services.
Yahoo has said that it will also try out Goodmail's system in the coming months, but has yet to decide how paid e-mail will be differentiated from unpaid.