AOL to Charge Fee as Way to Cut SPAM
America Online will begin charging businesses to send commercial e-mail to its users in the first wide-scale use of authenticated e-mail to reduce spam. "This is all about protecting consumers from spam, phishing, viruses and fraud," says Richard Gingras, CEO of Goodmail. Gingras compares the system to certified postal mail. Still, the revamped commercial e-mail system could have unintended consequences for some marketers and consumers. Some marketers affected by the plan, set to start in several weeks, call it e-mail taxation designed to create a new stream of revenue for AOL.