Four More ISPs To Make Marketers Pay Up Because Their Spam Filters Don't Work

from the what's-the-price-of-nothing-these-days dept

Thu, Jun 7th 2007 3:57pm — Carlo Longino

A little more than a year ago, AOL and Yahoo said they'd start using a service from a company called Goodmail, which would let marketers pay a fee to bypass their spam filters. The idea wasn't to allow spammers to get through by paying, but rather to let senders of legitimate commercial messages ensure their messages were received by AOL and Yahoo users, though that didn't stop the backlash. Now comes word that four more ISPs -- Comcast, Cox, Time Warner and Verizon -- will use the system (via Broadband Reports). While this will probably provoke another strong response, it appears to be a relative non-issue, and just a pointless service the ISPs and vendors are trying to sell. A Verizon spokesman notes that it will still whitelist companies' messages for free, but the Goodmail service exists "for those that want approval at multiple ISPs at once." Of course, the real solution would be just to get better spam filters that don't block so many legitimate messages, but why bother when you can charge for this sort of service instead?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

11 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

urza, 7 Jun 2007 @ 5:04pm

gmail
And that is exactly why I use gmail.
Well actually, no it's not, but it's one of the many, MANY benefits.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ehrichweiss, 7 Jun 2007 @ 7:10pm

I guess they never...
...used yahoo's lame mail. I have a ton of spam on my yahoo accnt, in the inbox not the bulk folder, so much that I rarely bother checking it any more. My gmail accnt on the other hand gets about 2 pieces of spam a year.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mark, 7 Jun 2007 @ 7:25pm

Re: I guess they never...
Only 2 per year? Unfortunately, I end up classifying 10 - 15 per day as SPAM. Same for my wife and several other google hosted Domain email accounts. While I think Google's SPAM system is better than most, it certainly doesn't block all but 2 per year for me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Brian, 7 Jun 2007 @ 7:35pm

Time Warner
I am shocked to hear Time warner has filtering, I get hundreds of spams a day, what a joke
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Just Me, 7 Jun 2007 @ 7:36pm

COMCAST IS NO SURPRISE
When I moved here two years ago I signed up with the the local cable co (ComCrap) since they are the only game in town (other than the nasty telco). I had my gmail acct and my wife still uses yahoo, so the 'default' comcast account although created has NEVER been used.

I see it every so often as I check the bill or something, now I guess I know why an e-mail address that has never been used can get 200 - 300 spam mails over the course of a month or two.

This whole idea is no different then when the telco's figured out that they could charge for the service they were providing for free (411).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Stute, 7 Jun 2007 @ 7:38pm

Gmail = Win
I classify a message or two as spam per month....I
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Cesa, 8 Jun 2007 @ 3:06am

Re: I guess they never...
I get about 10 spam e-mails a day, so about 3500 a year. Somewhere in the range 4-8 of those in my inbox, the rest in the spam folder. That's about 99.8% correctly classified spam, I doubt any filter can get much better than that.

I've used gmail since about a month or two after it was released, and during that time only two "real" e-mails were classified as spam, so that is quite impressive as well.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Chris, 8 Jun 2007 @ 10:50am

Wait, what is 'legitimate commercial email' exactly? I don't want junk mail from major corporations any more than from start ups and scam artists.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
James, 8 Jun 2007 @ 11:08am

Re: Re: I guess they never...
I get about the same number, but I believe most of it is from when you sign up to a website sometimes you forget to uncheck that little box that represents the "Do you want messages from our partners?" Gmail is good to use. Only one time, I got a phishing email that was setup as a bogus Paypal newsletter. First clue that it was fake was it addressed me as Dear PayPal User, authentic Paypal emails address you by your name.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jun 2007 @ 11:12am

Racket
Seems like some kind of extortion racket to me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rich Kulawiec, 8 Jun 2007 @ 2:53pm

Goodmail will ultimately become a spam support ser
All companies like this inevitably succumb to the profit motive.
For example, Habeas (founded on a laughably stupid idea) was
accepting cash from spammers *the day they started* -- in fact,
they listed Topica (one of the Internet's most well-known major
spamhauses) as a "partner" on their web site (since quietly removed).

The same thing will happen to Goodmail, if it hasn't already.
The wads of cash from spammers like Constant Contact and
Doubleclick and Cheetahmail and Postmaster General will all
provde too attractive to turn down. And in the end, Internet
users will continue to be subjected to unrelenting abuse
from these scumbags.

We've seen this movie before. It always ends the same
way. There's no reason for this time to be any different.

Let me also not fail to note that one of the major ironies here
is that ISPs such as Comcast and Verizon are some of the
biggets spam SOURCES on the planet, due to their incredible
incompetence, stupidity, and laziness. Their inability to run
their networks properly is really a major factor in the overall
spam load imposed on the entire Internet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]