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AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam Filters

By Last Night in Little Rock, Section Off Topic
Posted on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 03:53:37 PM EST
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by Last Night in Little Rock

This is somewhat off topic, or is it? You are reading this on a computer. Therefore, you get spam. Spam is a fact of Internet life. Therefore, you are interested in this:

Remember the "'Net Lore" false urban legend of "Bill 602P" that would impose 5 cents postage on all e-mails, and you should write your Congressman?

Tomorrow's NY Times, posted on its website this afternoon, has an article that AOL and Yahoo! are on the verge of selling a spam filter avoider to mass e-mailers for 1/4 cent per e-mail.

Makes me wonder: Did they design spamfilters just to make it possible for mass marketers to buy their way around them?

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.

The key is the next sentence:

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

AOL's spamfilter is a part of its program. Then it sells the key to get around it. Capitalism and Internet life being what it is, somebody will write a program for sale that will take out AOL's and Yahoo!'s approved spam-for-sale.

Reminds me of one of the reasons I got TiVo: Avoiding TV spam called "commercials."

And this comes along just when all these spams for Viagra, Cialis, Lavitra, and penis enlargement petered out.

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    AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam Filters | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#1)
    by Sailor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:26:15 PM EST
    It's the AT&T business model, (also known as the protection racket), it costs extra NOT to be in the phone book, that is 'non-listed', more money to be 'non-published' and even more to not to be subject to caller ID. Hey, you want freedom, you're gonna have to pay for it!

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:28:21 PM EST
    From the article:
    The senders must promise to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely.
    It's not spam if you've agreed to receive it, so bypassing spam filters is a good thing.
    Reminds me of one of the reasons I got TiVo: Avoiding TV spam called "commercials."
    There's a difference between payment and spam - or would you prefer pay per view for all television? I've got a web browser that will allows me to block ads. Maybe I should block all the advertisements here at TalkLeft. Why do people want to use web based mail, anyway? Mail can't bypass my spam filter, and it works very, very well. Maybe "Last Night in Little Rock" misread the article? Or he's having a really bad day?

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#3)
    by Edger on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 05:41:21 PM EST
    I use Outlook 2003 to connect to Gmail, and almost never give my email address to a website. It works well and just about zero spam gets thru the combination of gmail and my safe senders list. My hotmail account receives an average of 20-30 spam items every day, and one day there were more than 700 spam items from the same sender in it.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#4)
    by scarshapedstar on Sat Feb 04, 2006 at 06:25:54 PM EST
    Huh. I guess that completes my switch to Gmail, then.

    Re: AOL and Yahoo! To Sell Ability to Avoid Spam F (none / 0) (#5)
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