From J-Walk Blog:
Yahoo’s researchers want you to voluntarily slap a one-cent stamp on your outgoing e-mails, with proceeds going to charity, in a bid to cut down on spam. Can doing good really do away with spam, which consumes 33 terawatt hours of electricity every year, not to mention way too much of our time?
The idea behind CentMail is that paying to send e-mail – even a single cent – differentiates a real e-mail from spam blasts, and thus, spam filters can be adjusted to let the stamped mail sail right through, according to a report from New Scientist. Users would get to choose which charity benefits from their penny missives, which the researchers hope will convince people to pay CentMail for something that’s currently free.
To avoid the micro-payment problem, users would pre-pay.
Would you go for this?
no, I really dont get any spam ,the filter must be working pretty good
I just keep multiple accounts to avoid spam now, and it seems to work fine. I sign up for crap with one address, and use the other for real stuff.
Billing me for the behavior of others? Nah, I’ll just stick to deleting the few that get through.
This makes about as much sense as billing me a dime every time I see a motorcyclist. Them I don’t delete, I just wave and think about my youth.
If yall stay off those porn sites you can avoid a lot of spam.
This is what I mean when I say that “If your using windows your part of the problem” The fact is the majority of spam is sent from infected windows computers. Linux computers despite the fact that if properly modified can be incredible spam generating devices do not have viruses. If everyone was a linux user spam would be mostly dead.
Spammer profit from their spam, we in general do not profit from our emails. Go after those who make the profit, that tie up bandwidth, and waste energy. I’m always leery when “somebody else” wants to add a tax to take care of a problem, it just opens the door for new taxes and the problems are never solved.
It’s a good idea in theory, I wouldn’t mind paying for my emails, but what about inter office emails? Would the company get charged for it? Also can I set myself up as a charity.
Pay a penny no way, today its a penny tomorrow it would be a dime, then a quarter…
Another thought, what about email blasts? I have newsletters sent to me, and other mailing lists that I want. The company shouldn’t pay so I can keep up with what is going on, but I shouldn’t pay for it either.
But then how would I find out how to make my penis bigger?
Remember when cable TV didn’t have commercials. This is how it starts, a little now and then it becomes more.
Did our Bitsy get spammed?
Isiah wrote
“Linux computers despite the fact that if properly modified can be incredible spam generating devices do not have viruses”
But if everybody was a linux user it wouldnt be interesting to make virus’ to windows and therefore they would exist to linux instead. Simple as that I am sure.
I wouldnt pay either for what other does in this matter. I believe in taxes to pay for common welfare and I pay my tax with pleasure even though I live in one of the most taxed countries and pay like 40-45 procent in tax plus vat when I use my money.
bitscared wrote
“But then how would I find out how to make my penis bigger?”
In Denmark we have a so called doctor (electrician) that somehow solve that problem. Only problem is the disfunction afterwards. Dont know where he is but for a few pennies I am sure we can find him 😉 😛
/Jacob
A happy linux and windows user
No, I would not pay.
This tax would only hit the “honest” e-mailers (sending e-mails to friends, sending out newsletters), but not the spammers. How would you get the spammers to pay? If you reject their e-mail, they will figure out a way to fake the stamp so it looks like they paid their tax.
This would not work.
I am happy with my spam blocker.
Bitsy – Is there something that you need to tell us?
Brett hit the nail on the head. Stop penalising the legitimate users and go after the spammers. After all, spammers make money for sending this stuff out, they’re obviously going to be able to pay a penny.
What this smacks of is Yahoo trying to make a fast buck out of a situation at the expense of the people who are the victims instead of those who are the cause. Either that or Yahoo are trying to make us pay for the fact that they couldn’t be arsed to properly police their own e-mail service.
soo bitscared what do you want 9 or 10inch
To Maffu and all who think this is a tax: it is a voluntary donation to an organization of your choice. Yahoo gets no money. The government gets no money.
Also, how I understand it is that the unstamped emails will be put through a human spam filter.
No, Definetly I’d rather enlarge my penis.
By now I do think that many people is getting too many pennies for something quite close to nothing as to consider this seriously. I mean that there are lots of ways to manage donations.
rftgnow – I don’t really give a tinker’s cuss where the money goes.
The important point is that the money goes in the first place.
Any measure that involves pay per mail is doing away with the foremost reason that email is so universally popular – it costs nothing.
Yahoo – before you ask me to make ‘donations’ how about you pull your fingers out of your arses and spend some of your millions of dollars of profit ($141 million for the second quarter this year alone) on sorting your own house out?
I would rather pay $40.00 a month for a provider then use yahoo for free, so why would I want to pay to use a service as lousy as Yahoo,
I have at least seven email accounts. I get an average of 2o spam per day in my yahoo account. I get about 10 spam in my Hotmail account per day, but at least Hotmail catch half of them in the filter. I get an average of one spam every four months in all the other account combine. Yahoo want to help us avoid spam for a cost? I think Yahoo is the problem.
@Jacob
If you are a happy linux user then you know how much mroe control over applications you are given. You know that any port on your comp can be sniffed, every packet managed. You also know that since there is almost all worthwhile software on linux is free and open-source. On top of which the sharp divison between userland powers and root powers makes a virus hard to survive. There is a much much larger incentive to hack linux then there ever was to hack windows. The military, governments, universities, major corporations, and the very stock exchanges in the world use it.
The reason viruses are not written for linux is becuase it is so nearly impossible to do it. About 1% of the home computers in the world use linux, but a linux computer converted into a spam box can send off almost 40 times as much spam as a windows one can.
I have a lot of doubts and questions about this. It worries me greatly, and I find it reprehensible. I wouldn’t touch it. (I’m talking about Bitsy’s peenie. Why? What are you guys talking about??)
Gmail is FREE. And it works great to block it!
Well, ok, I don’t have a penis but if I did finding out how to enlarge it may be very important!
Why use Linux when Mac OS X is available and easier?
No viruses on Macs either.
Instead of charging everyone for every email, why can’t they just charge those who send over, say, 200/day or something? Anything over 200/day or 6,000/mo or something, & you pay a fee. Seems reasonable to me.