Good Faith Spam — continued

by Rebecca Lieb [March 4, 2004]

"I wouldn't deny there are those possibilities," confessed Richard Gingras, president and CEO of Goodmail Systems. Goodmail's been in the news as the paid-stamp provider in talks with the three leading ISPs and others. Gingras expects his service to launch as early as this summer.

"There are many existing methods to monitor and address high-volume misbehavior by bots—monitoring levels of activity, double opt-in confirmations, etcetera," he said.. "Such mechanisms help a volume sender detect and address a sudden surge of a hundred thousand illegitimate subscription requests."

Gingras said his system will have to take into account how to respond to situations such as the ones outlined above. "There's an awful amount of spoofing today," he added.

E-mail postage, Gingras believes, can "create an area where we can restore functional behavior and trust. Many methods used to address spam have negative, unintended consequences. Two-thirds of consumers have lost messages to false positives. A positive, functional solution makes great sense."

He shared not-yet-published company research. In it, 75 percent of consumers don't believe mass e-mail should be free; and 77 percent said they're more likely to open a stamped message. Goodmail is developing a sliding-scale fee structure to accommodate large, medium-sized, small, and nonprofit bulk senders.

AOL's head of e-mail operations, Brian Sullivan, believes there's plenty to work out, not least of which is enabling easy payment transactions, before e-mail postage becomes a reality.

Some angry marketers fume they'll never pay. "Preferred practitioners of double confirmed opt-in should be exempt from postage," grumbled one large publisher. He blames the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), a double opt-in opponent, for the fact his organization may one day be forced to pay for e-newsletter delivery.

There is, however, broad publisher support for a clause Gingras says ISPs insist on: "Bounces should count. If e-mailers aren't behaving properly and cleaning their lists, then in the view of ISPs, the stamp will be cancelled and the sender will be charged."

There's an upside. E-mail postage practically mandates confirmed double opt-in subscriptions (it's cheaper to stamp one confirmation message than hundreds of unsolicited newsletters). And sysadmins may finally turn off superfluous autoresponders (virus alert messages sent to innocent spoofed "senders" are as much to blame for network slowdowns as the viruses themselves).

Leading trade groups, including the Email Service Provider Coalition (ESPC), say they "conceptually" support e-mail postage. Primarily, they advocate authenticated sender identity (a critical step, but of little help with good faith messages sent by legitimate mailers). Ideally, they want a rebuilt e-mail infrastructure. E-mailers, after all, pay the postage. Participating ISPs are the beneficiaries.

Yes, ISPs have an enormous interest in stopping spam, delivering good e-mail, and easing server load. Yet there's a lemons-to-lemonade dimension to anything that might wring positive cash flow out of a negative situation. Major ISPs are broadly in favor of e-mail postage. (Could MSN earn money every time a newly discovered Microsoft security hole generates an e-mail tsunami?)

Marketers and publishers must exercise the most caution. E-mail postage has enough merit to not be dismissed out of hand. But money's a powerful lure to hackers, phishers, spammers, and their ilk. E-mail postage could become a Pandora's box of new online scams. If a bad guy is mad at, or competitive with, an organization that pays to send e-mail, havoc could ensue.

Who mediates the millions of complaints? What will e-mail marketing and publishing cost once postal fees, plus requisite additional layers of site and network security, are factored in? What about consumer education?

Bottom line: What's the value, and to whom?

E-mail postage, like any anti-spam strategy, is no silver bullet. Legitimate businesses must seriously consider the angles.

It's your money.

—End

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