AOL and Yahoo create bulk mail tariffs to fight spam

AOL and Yahoo are to charge businesses for bulk mail-outs that skip through their spam filters

Internet giants AOL and Yahoo are planning to start charging companies to send bulk email, in a bid to tackle the problem of spam and phishing attacks.

According to reports, companies signing up to the service will be charged between a quarter of a cent and one cent to send each message. In return, AOL and Yahoo will let certified emails avoid spam filters and stamp them as legitimate.

This could help firms sending out authentic email marketing campaigns to avoid being classed as spam and getting filtered out before reaching users’ desktops – although AOL said that its subscribers could still block certified email senders using their anti-spam account tools.

The initiative is designed to help tackle spam and phishing by adding a cost to sending bulk email, which should limit the financial reward for spammers; and by making it more difficult for illegal outfits to masquerade as legitimate organisations.

The email charging scheme is not available to UK firms at present, according to AOL spokesman Phil Hale, due to Goodmail’s services currently being limited to the US.

However, he added that AOL would definitely be interested in rolling the scheme out to firms in the UK if a similar certification service became available in Europe.

Hale also said that the scheme was not likely to prove a revenue generator for AOL, and that the fee-per-email was likely to be closer to a quarter cent than a cent. “But there’s a potential for greater returns on firms’ email marketing campaigns if they’re using the service, as there’s a greater chance that recipients will accept the message as genuine,” he added.

But some spam experts argued that the scheme would do little to reduce the junk email problem. David Hughes, chief executive of anti-spam specialist Reflexion Network Solutions, said that spammers will continue to look for creative ways to work around AOL's filters, while smaller, legitimate direct mail marketers lacking the resources to pay the toll would be the ones to suffer.

Companies choosing not to sign up to the scheme will continue to have their email directed through existing anti-spam filtering systems. However, this also offers spammers the opportunity to continue trying their luck with the old method in the hope that some messages get through.