BS: Should we pay for email ?

Subject: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Shaneo
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 01:53 PM

With over %90 of computer virus coming from email junk is it time that we started to pay to send email.
I'm sure this could work , lets say one cent per email sent.
Slammers send millions a day , so would the fact that you pay get rid of the spammers.
When you receive mail from the post man or a text message you have no fear of opening it [unless it's a bill]
When you receive email it has the potential of damaging your computer.
I don't know the logistics of setting up such a practise of paying to send email , but lets say you could buy a few hundred at a time with a credit card.
Or get credits in a shop-pay as you send-

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: MMario
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 01:58 PM

1) it hasn't stopped junk mail in the 3D-verse.

2) letter bombs do exist.

3) you already pay for e-mail when you pay for internet service.

4) regulation/enforcement would be next to impossible.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 03:10 PM

It would drive up the costs for this library to do business, possibly to the point where were would stop sending overdue and other notices. We're already looking at ways to cut our current postage costs of USD 6,000+ and emailing overdue notices is a big one.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 03:16 PM

There's a much simpler remedy being piloted somewhere (I forget where) which is to add a short delay in message transfer time, which makes it impossible to send millions of emails with a single click that get delivered in mere minutes. Since only spammers depend on these astrononmical volumes to do their business it targets the intended population rather nicely, and only slows down real email by a few seconds or some such.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Slag
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 04:10 PM

No.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Peace
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 04:11 PM

"When you receive mail from the post man or a text message you have no fear of opening it [unless it's a bill]"

Great. Tell that to Homeland Security.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: MMario
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 04:14 PM

and - since some phone services CHARGE to open a text message (for example - mine) I don't open text messages unless I have *asked* someone to text me something.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 05:42 PM

I've pretty well given up using email as a way of communicating with people. If paying some small payment, a fraction of the cost of snail mail, that'd be well worth it if it cut out the spam.

As for junk mail in the post, I wish there could some system for differential pricing that made it uneconomic. Maybe they could charge ten times the postage for any letter that wasn't addressed by hand...

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Greg B
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 05:52 PM

As someone who does internet stuff (including some bulk mail
applications) for a living, this makes me chuckle.

The whole 'penny a message' thing is not technically feasible:
Email is a 'peer to peer' process with no real intermediary to
be 'toll keeper.' If you send me an email, your ISP's email
server talks directly to my company's email server to pass the
message.

In such an environment, who sells the stamps? Who cancels them?
Who keeps the penny?

While the 'bandwidth throttling' thing sounds good in principle,
it doesn't work for legitimate commercial e-mailers. It's led to
all sorts of problems. For example, if my client has 150,000
customers who've said "please send me your monthly catalog of
specials" (and that isn't unusual) chances are about 30000 of
these folks will be at AOL. So, AOL says 'no more than 1000
mails to our clients from one address in an hour' then we either
have to a) resend a gazillion times or b) split our sends up
over multiple IPs to 'fool' the system or c) go through a complicated,
expensive, and fragile 'bonded sender' program which I can tell you
from experience are a really ill-administered racket.

Spammers can rather easily (more easily than many small- to
medium-size businesses) pull off (a) or (b)).

So all throttling programs really do is to hurt legitimate
businesses and deny paying customers receipt of emails which
they've asked for an to which they're entitled delivery of same.

On the other hand, there are very adequate solutions such as:

a) Bayesian filters--- mine are 99.8% accurate in filtering my
   mail, which after more than a decade of public addresses is
   about 95% SPAM.
b) Responsive context-sensitive filters at ISP--- I've recently
   moved my personal email to one which, for example, is quite
   successful at blocking 'image SPAM.'
c) Anti-virus programs which miss very little AVG is free,
   Norton and McAfee are also quite good

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 05:56 PM

Not opening ANY emails that are not from someone you know and trust goes a long way toward keeping your system safe. Virus scanning an individual message also works. Doing a regular virus scan is essential.

As for just plain junk emails, my server grabs and isolates those.

Paying extra for the privilege of email isn't the answer, imo. Spammers and hackers would find a way around that soon enough- and maybe do even more damage, if the recipient felt safer because of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 08:12 PM

In fact the idea is silly.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Apr 07 - 08:19 PM

It's really quite easy to weed out all the unwanted spam, delete it, and never open any of it. Doing so takes me about 10 seconds a day. This is no big challenge in my life!

So the answer to your question, Shaneo, is "no".

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 09:39 AM

Well, it's a big challenge in MY life. I worry that that the people who sent those emails I so callously delete aren't really poor people, just barely hanging on and my failure to buy from them will cause them to despair and that with all their last hopes dashed by me their poor, broken bodies will be found floating face-down in the cold, muddy waters of the Thames and their children will end up standing outside the pub, hollow-eyed and gaunt from hunger, begging for a farthing or a groat, while rich bloated plutocrats kick them aside into the drifting snow. All because I deleted the email offering me a lottery ticket to enhance my manhood and stop the erectile dysfunction I don't have by refinancing my mortgage that could have saved them from A Fate Worse Than Death.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Scoville
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 10:29 AM

I get almost no SPAM in the first place, even with a freebie account (gmail, in my case). Some freebies are worse than others; Lycos sucked. Yahoo was bad for awhile but I eventually got it under control. I actually get less SPAM through Gmail than I do at my work account, which has a veritable obstacle course of firewalls and SPAM detection. I never open anything that isn't very obviously from someone I know, and I run anti-virus stuff regularly.   

And Rapaire is right; so many small businesses and nonprofits use it so much that having to pay for it would be a real kick in the teeth.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: GUEST,shaneo
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 10:52 AM

I have been using Gmail for two years now , it was fine at first , but of late there are tons getting through.
Perhaps if there were stiff penalties for sending junk , like massive fines .and for those sending the other kind , the virus spreaders , a jail term.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Scoville
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 10:55 AM

Oh, I'm all about penalizing for junk mail (email or snail mail), but not for charging private users.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Tone d'F
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 03:03 PM

Follow the money, is one way of slowing, junkmail.

people who send junkmail often do it by bypassing "front ends" many peoples computers send junkmail, without the owners knowlege.

Forget about trying to target teh people who send the junkmail, they are fairly well hidden, fine the companies who hire / profit from these emails.

Bill the person selling the goods, it will soon stop, when they have to pay properly for their advertising

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: fumblefingers
Date: 18 Apr 07 - 11:53 PM

Who gets the money?

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Dickey
Date: 19 Apr 07 - 01:18 AM

I am for paying something like a tenth of a cent for an email which would foil the spammers but I understand you can set up your home computer as a mail server and bypass the system.

Perhaps mail coming from a .edu and .gov domain could be free.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Tone d'F
Date: 19 Apr 07 - 03:48 AM

Yes you can set up your comp as a mail server, or worse have yours used without your knowlege.

As I said the annonymous people who send the spam are paid by the sellers or manufactureres of the products, if they wern'nt being paid, there would be no reason to send it.

Target the shops and manufacturers with a Spam tax.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Fergie
Date: 19 Apr 07 - 11:01 AM

What if International Charities set up an email service that charged say 1c per email and this charge went directly to say UNESCO or Red Crescent/Cross or some equally deserving international charity.
When I sign up I email all my contacts and inform them that I wish to participate in this charitable campaign and that as and from a certain future date my spam filter will only accept emails if they come via one of these Certified Charitable email providers.
I can't think of any of my contacts that would object to paying 1c per email or who would not signup.
Companies and commercial concerns would soon follow suit because it would be good for business and they would reap the benefit of ridding their systems of the bloody nuisance that spam has become.
Eventually most civic minded users would move over to one of these providers.
Spammers would then be confined to spamming an ever shrinking pool of users that have not signed up to the Charity pay system.
This is just an idea, I can't see any technical reason why it could not work and it would prove such a win win situation for legitimate users as opposed to abusers of the internet email system.
What do you think?
Fergus

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Shaneo
Date: 19 Apr 07 - 11:17 AM

Yes Fergie that sure could work , but the bottom line with email service providers is they also make lots of money sending out offers of this that and the other ,MSN and Hotmail in popular , When someone clicks on one of their offers and goes to the sellers site to purchase stuff , then the email provider gets a share of the sale.
But if some new company was to set up an email forwarding service with no adds. or promotions and charge 1 cent,,,,well there's an opening for someone.

Billions of cents a day,,and no more spam , junk

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Apr 07 - 02:19 PM

There is no simple answer

My grandmother, and a lot of her generation, used to put up signs saying "No Hawkers" - and that didn't stop them. It is a culture - and not one we applaud but the people you want to target spend their whole life figuring ways to get round the blocks. charging is a good way in theory - just not practical given the critical mass of the internet has long since passed. But look at telemarketing - it is all about the cost of doing it. I am ex-directory and on the TPS register and still they try - I am on the list of numbers that exist but not visible anywhere, one that does occasionally answer. Next time I will string them along just to annoy and slow them down.

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: Big Phil
Date: 20 Apr 07 - 02:05 PM

NO

Subject: RE: BS: Should we pay for email ?
From: open mike
Date: 20 Apr 07 - 02:09 PM

I do pay for e-mail.
I pay for internet service,
computer equipment, and
electricity.

I used to also pay for an
e-mail program annually,
but no longer use Eudora.