Virtual Stamps: Sending Emails To Be Charged

I heard, some very vague information about this being worked out, I heard about it on My local news but wasn't able to pick up any details about it. From what I heard, every email that you'll send will cost you about the same as you would mailing a letter. I'm not 100% positive about this information, it was very vague details what I got.. has anyone got information about this?

You probably are referring to a news report about one of Microsoft's plans for combatting spam.

Don't worry. This idea has been floating around for years.

There's no way they can start charging for emails without you opting into the system.

The only thing is, spam is getting so bad that a lot of people may voluntarily opt into such a system to cut down on the spam.

Actually the cost would supposedly be 1 cent (or even less) per email. The idea behind it being people like us would spend a few dollars on email a month at most, while spammers would be forced to spend millions.

Didn't CompuServe charge for sending/receiving emails years back? They also had numbers only for email addresses, as I recall.

It's impossible to force people to do that, since after all, you can just jump off the email protocol and make your own.

I saw a note about it on CNN at the McDonalds, myself.

This is probably going to be the only way to curb spam... spam's getting way too bad to just shrug it off and plow through.

It eats TONS of bandwidth, suckers millions of people, and wastes thousands of hours of time.

A cent per email would be a wonderful idea.

LF

There are many problems with this idea. Not the least of which is to make it work would require features in place that in and of themselves could cut down on spam nearly as much as the charging would.

One such feature is accountability. Right now it is trivially easy to 'spoof' an email to appear to come from someone else. You can't allow that if you are going to be charging to send right? You must know exactly who sent it. Well one of the big problems with all spam legislation is the inability to do that. If you can verify that the email is comming from where it said it is comming from, and discard all those that aren't, then you cut out a LOT of spam. You havn't charged anyone yet and you also make spam legislation far more enforceable. Such accounting would also allow for far better blacklisting abilities.

Another feature of proposed email tax has been an optional system. When I receive an email I can decide whether to charge the person that sent it a penny or not. If its my friend, wife or mom I won't charge them. If its spamlord_01 then yeah, I will hit that charge button. That wouldn't be so bad but again, its sorta superflous. If the mechanics are there to make this really work then the charging isn't needed, its just extra to line someones pockets.

So.. what you're sayin is ama, that if you receive an email that you don't want, you can have the ISP company charge the sender a cent per email that you don't want? .. what about like those that can do it anonymously? There are definate ways to get around being tracked (PC Magazine pointed this out) so how would this system even work if you don't know who the sender is? A lot of the emails I get are unknown senders, I just report it to the ISP and they take care of it.

I may be misreading what you wrote, but I think you said the same thing I was trying to say? To make the pay system work you need a 100% reliable way to track who sent what. If you have a 100% reliable way to track who sent what you don't really need to charge to curb spam.

I think I may not be clear, but I can't think of a better way to say it.

I believe spam isnt really as horrid a problem as people think it is.

Having an email address almost all my life, the only large scale spam attack I've experianced was with my AOL account. I used to get hundreds of spam messages. But, I mean, that's what you get for signing up with a company that stupid. AOL is one of the worst internet services I have ever had the displeasure to use. As long as email users are cautious about giving out the email address that they don't want spam in. (I personally have many for different tasks, one I use for experimentation (like submitting an email to a service whos reputation i'm unsure of), one for SL scripts, one for mailing lists, one for personal email, one for professional email), they will only very rarely have spam.

Using the multiple email system and spam filters commonly implemented in email software today, spam is practicly a nonissue.

I think charging for email is absolutely absurd. The POP3 and SMTP protocols, being standards, would need to be massively overhauled and made appealing enough so users would make the switch.

==Chris

So long as we pay for our internet access, we should not pay for email on top of that.

We don't pay for access to the mail system, we pay to put things into the mail system.

If bandwidth is free and we have to pay for content, then I would not be disagreeable to paying for email.

I've lost 5 email accounts due to spam. Two were hotmail accounts, and three were on my own server... it's so bad I can't see any real messages. It's all spam.

This is with emails simply posted to correspondance, I didn't sign anything up with it or anything.

Spammers use web crawlers to snag email up. It's annoying as sin.

LF

Isn't this internet scam older than the "send an e-card to Timmy" thing? I think this has been going around for about five years now, and it's never been true.

I have a "test" account for spam. I use it to sign up for anything that might generate spam, and as I have had it since the dawn of the Internet (you know, back when Al Gore and I were inventing it) it gets a LOT of spam.

I've tried various filtering mechanisms, grinding the baysean filters to a halt trying to tease out the needle or two of valid email from my haystack of spam.

So far the only thing I've found that works, without either filtering out valid messages, or requiring a lot of monitoring on my part is mailblocks.com which works on principle that if you are not in my address book, you have to answer a web based challenge to get email through to me. I paid $10 for three years of this. Now they have a free version too (I don't know what the limitations are).

Longer term the solution of charging all senders for email I think is the only alternative to stronger laws. I'd favor the charge over the law. Just think, a nickel a message probably wouldn't affect most of us, but it would put most spammers out of business in a hurry unless they learned to target their market... that is, aim the message at people who might actually be interested. Even so, the charges for email might be enough to pay for the internet, allowing us to surf for free.

That's my hope anyway.

Those email filters aren't all that great either. Spammers just deliberately misspell the key words. I must have over 50 different ways to spell Viagra in my filter, and it only gets some of those emails. The filters regularly gets about half the spam I receiver.

Yes.

I think Ama has the best point, that charging is basically useless unless you're able to track people. But if you're able to track email indefinitely...why not just stop or block them in the first place?

I certainly wouldn't mind paying 1 cent to send an email, but for some people that might not be such a great option either. What about people that aren't spammers who send out mass mailings that ARE wanted? I don't mean the 1,000,000 email things, I mean stuff like teachers sending out emails to all their students, or a club leader sending out emails, etc. For some people all those pennies will add up.

Of course you could always just say that if they're sending out 100 emails a week then they should be paying a little for it... but comeon..it's email!

Simple statments about this....

Solutions on spam

about 6years ago I used to get tons of spam5-700 aday

I since learned to filter with my own eyes I know the email I should be recieving vs that that is of no importance to me.

So I simply go down the list check and delete the ones Idont know and move on. If I am communicating with someone in agame or a program that I am corrisponding to or about I ensure I know who they are based on thier customer support documentation or if its a person I am communicating in a game with by confirming thier email. The rest hits the trash.

after doing that for 4years the spammers dwindled down to nothing I get maybe maybe 4 a day now.

key here is do not open do not respond. Just Delete

By doing this thier servers cannot justify whether you account is valid or not. However, the moment you open in it activates the tracking tracer and wala they have you zoned in and pegged.

As for paying for email "I DON'T THINK SO!" I pay enough in having my bandwidth of 2gig (almost 120) a month why in the hades would I want to pay more for e-mail. I mean geesh its still using my bandwidth its MY Slice I have already paid for thats like asking me to pay for the walnuts seperate after buying a slice of Walnut Pie. Kinda screwed if you ask me.

I mean I would if say the "Post Office " offered Guarenteed Secure Incription Email that could not be intercepted EVER but thats not the case. with the Internet nothing is really ever secure so hence MOOT point to paying for email.

The only viable option I see to this would be the ability to turn into a govermental service email that we feel is spam and do not want to read or deal with like a forwarding service that wont open the offending email but forwards it on to the govermental agency that would collect.

my2$

Garoad has the right reason why paying for email won't work. I volunterily(sp) sign up for mail lists: I have a lefties group, 4 different security / virus alert lists (I'm a sys admin that stuff is important), 2 email game mags. All those are services that are free, but would be cost prohibitive if there was any charge on email. I also run my own forums, although fairly small there are over 200 registered users. I don't sent mail that often, but at a penny a mail it will cost me over $2 to make an announcement. With discussion groups, every person will have to pay for every email sent to everyone in the group every time they send an email.

There are valid mass mailings. People won't get it though until its too late and favorite daily email mag sends you a notice that to contiue service you have to pay them monthly.