Spam Blocker Charges for e-Mail
Monty Solomon
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 19, 2003, 1:34 PM PT
An Australian entrepreneur has created what may be the first antispam
service that lets its users charge for the privilege of sending them
e-mail.
The concept has been discussed in technology circles for the better
part of a decade, but Sydney resident Bernard Palmer, 59, has decided
to try to turn the concept into a business. "Spammers aren't going to
be sending many spams to you if you charge them 50 cents," Palmer said.
"A spam would cost them $2 million."
Palmer's service, which he plans to announce on Thursday, is called
CashRamSpam.com. After people pay $36 with a credit card to sign up for
a CashRamSpam account, users may set their contact fee to be anywhere
from a few pennies to as high as they think anyone would be willing to
pay.
Some antispam services try to use text or numerals embedded in graphic
images to discern whether the sender is a human, while others rely on
"whitelists" of approved correspondents, pattern-matching to flag
suspect messages, or verification procedures. The process can be
problematic: On Tuesday, a coalition began compiling reports of
legitimate e-mail accidentally snared by spam traps.
At least in its current form, CashRamSpam is more of a "proof of
concept" than it is a robust antispam solution. Anyone who wishes to
contact a CashRamSpam customer must purchase an account themselves
first, there is no provision to permit friends or colleagues, and the
system does not permit legitimate mailing lists to which users
voluntarily subscribe to bypass the payment process. CashRamSpam keeps
10 percent of a user's contact fee as its payment.
When someone tries to contact a CashRamSpam customer, a message is
automatically returned saying: "We regret your message cannot be
delivered using ordinary e-mail because the receiver has a CashRamSpam
account...If you want to succeed in reaching this receiver please
register at www.cashramspam.com and resend the message from there."
Brad Templeton, who wrote an influential essay around 1995 about
charging for e-mail, says those shortcomings could doom the concept.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-985175.html