FW: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/technology/05AOL.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pag
ewanted=print

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail By SAUL HANSELL

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp
if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of
their customers.

America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail
accounts, are about to start using a system that gives preferential
treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny
each to have them delivered. The senders must promise to contact only people
who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.

The Internet companies say that 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. Thy also stand to earn millions of dollars a
year from the system if it is widely adopted.

AOL and Yahoo will still accept e-mail from senders who have not paid, but
the paid messages will be given special treatment. On AOL, for example, they
will go straight to users' main mailboxes, and will not have to pass the
gantlet of spam filters that could divert them to a junk-mail folder or
strip them of images and Web links. As is the case now, mail arriving from
addresses that users have added to their AOL address books will not be
treated as spam.

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