Coalition to fight AOL's plan to charge for commercial e-mail

[engine]

A coalition of unlikely partners, including MoveOn.org Civic Action, Gun Owners of America and Association of Cancer Online Resources, have joined forces to fight AOL's plan to charge businesses for commercial e-mail.

[usatoday.com...]

[Manga]

Although this is an obvious cash grab by AOL and Yahoo, I would pay the ransom to not have to worry about their filters. The amount of false positives generated by AOL and Yahoo is ridiculous.

[Kufu]

I don't understand why everyone doesn't point out the obvious: Companies can pay to send you unsolicited email.

So basically if you pay, you can spam.

I don't care who the email is from (large corporation or email spammer), if I haven't asked to receive it, it is spam.

[Rosalind]

Users can still set up domain and word filters of their own to block spam, so this is hardly opening the floodgates. It's only a few quid, but that should be enough to make it unviable for most of the spammers who peddle untargeted pills, stock alerts, and dodgy stock offers.

The real test will be how well this goes down with their users.

[LifeinAsia]

Actually, the obvious answer is to not use AOL or Yahoo e-mail accounts.

[Kufu]

Actually, the obvious answer is to not use AOL or Yahoo e-mail accounts.

There you go. Perfect solution. I get no spam in my Gmail inbox (they all go to the spam folder) and all of the important emails get through fine.

Maybe AOL and Yahoo! need to spend some money improving their spam filters.

[LifeinAsia]

Maybe AOL and Yahoo! need to spend some money improving their spam filters.

They did. Now to recoup their investment, they are letting companies pay to bypass those filters. :)

Next, they will probably offer a premium (i.e. paid) service to e-mail users to block the bypassers.

[Kufu]

Next, they will probably offer a premium (i.e. paid) service to e-mail users to block the bypassers.

Oh the humanity! lol