The following is a copy of an email I received today - I have NO idea who originally sent this. It was forwarded to me by a friend…

Fred, Thought you’d like to know about this new policy that will directly affect your AOL subscribers.

Seems as if AOL will start charging for incoming e-mails coming from a mailing list. Those that don’t pay will be sent to the Bulk Mail box.

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3581301

Thanks for the wonderful newsletter! —John

That’s true, John. AOL and Yahoo will both start using the “Goodmail” sender-verification service, which charges senders up to about a penny per email to get a magical seal of approval that will let the email past AOL’s and Yahoo’s filters. AOL and Yahoo say that because spammers won’t pay, this charging for inbound mail “will help identify legitimate mail and reduce junk email, identity-theft scams and other scourges that plague users.” Wow, sounds great!

Except for a few teensy little details: First, and most obviously, there’s the highly questionable idea that, if you can pay a penny per email, you’re legit. It’s like buying an indulgence from the church in the middle ages: All it takes is some disposable income, and you can buy your way out of being labeled a sinner, er, I mean spammer What a marvelously cynical way of doing business: If you can pay, you must be a good guy! (Yes, there’s more than that to sender verification, but it remains in essence a simple means test.)

Plus, the majority of people who’d worry about being “verified” are legitimate emailers who’d never spam in the first place. So, sender verification services— like most of the other half-baked antispam tools in use— tend to punish the innocent.

But it gets worse: You see, as part of the deal with Goodmail, AOL and Yahoo will share in Goodmail’s revenue. That means that AOL and Yahoo have a profit motive for using Goodmail. AOL and Yahoo now will make money from both ends of the email delivery process— a potential gold mine for them: Not only will they be charging their customers to read their mail (via the normal subscriber fees) but now AOL and Yahoo will also try to charge for sending email into the AOL system. Kind of puts a different spin on it, doesn’t it? What a deal for AOL and Yahoo! They should replace the famous “you’ve got mail” clip with a simple “ka-ching!” cash-register sound.

Goodmail has competitors, and they’re understandably unhappy— why should Goodmail get all the business; and why should other sender-verification services get their mails blocked?— so AOL and Yahoo are tapdancing to find a way to make this work. Whatever they come up with, I’m sure they’ll spin it as “service to customers” and “protecting our customers from evil spammers” rather than as a way for those companies to make millions of extra dollars in new revenue.

Legitimate large-volume emailers, especially those with free or low-cost services (like this newsletter) also aren’t happy with the deal. I’ve heard of none— not a single one— who’s planning to go along with the AOL/Yahoo plan.

I’m going to continue to send my newsletter the same way as always. I’m not a spammer and never have been. Everyone who gets this newsletter has specifically requested it; and some— the Plus! subscribers, bless them— even pay to defray my costs. I am not going to run up my costs further for the privilege of getting the newsletter past the AOL and Yahoo filters. And I’m not going to charge you money so I can transfer it into AOL’s or Yahoo’s pockets.

If you’re an AOL or Yahoo user, I urge you to check for announcements from the companies on how to manage your filters and mailboxes under the new system. My newsletters aren’t spam; and I’ll send them to any address you specify. But all I can do is send them: You, and your mail provider, have to let them in.

More broadly, I don’t think sender-verification will reduce spam an iota; and it raises all kinds of questions about the motives of AOL and Yahoo for using it; and about the wisdom of allowing self-appointed, for profit “verifiers” to set themselves up as arbiters of who’s legitimate or not. The Electronic Freedom Foundation— hardly a spammer or friend of spammers, agrees that this kind of sender verification is a very bad idea: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004398.php

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