Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. and America Online Inc., plan to introduce a service that will charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk-mail filters.
The fees, which will range from a quarter of a cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited e-mails, or spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed that their messages will not be filtered and will bear a seal alerting recipients that they are legitimate.
Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. Dulles-based AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses. Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail.
"We were hearing not only from members but also e-mail partners that they wanted a different way of delivering e-mail that would stand out in the inbox and would guarantee them delivery," said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham, adding that AOL, a division of Time Warner Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months.
The plan, while it is optional and will apply to only a fraction of e-mail senders, amounts to a reversal in the economics of the Internet because it will charge message senders rather than those receiving them. The current model has led to the proliferation of spam and "phishing" scams because the people perpetuating them can turn a profit even when only a minority of recipients respond.
AOL and Yahoo said the program, which is being offered through a company called Goodmail Systems Inc., will target banks, online retailers and other groups that send large amounts of e-mail. In exchange for a payment and a pledge to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, the companies will be ensured that their e-mails are not diverted to spam folders and will not have images or Web addresses filtered out.
The companies also will receive reports showing how many e-mails were received successfully. The American Red Cross, the New York Times Co. and credit report company Experian have signed up with Goodmail to use the service, Graham said. AOL and Yahoo will get a cut of the fees charged by Goodmail.
Companies that do not want to pay a fee will be able to send e-mail to Yahoo and AOL members exactly as they have in the past, Graham and Mahon said.