[extropy-chat] Email Postage

[Robert Bradbury]

I am under the impression that the Yahoo/AOL payment plans are "external"
sender pays.  I.e. the payment is for the delivery, not the sending.  (I
can't believe any SPAMers would be sending from Yahoo/AOL accounts unless
they are compromised systems functioning as bot-relays.)

If they want they, as others have suggested, cap the number of "free" sent
emails to some number X per day where X is greater than the average a
spammer would like to send.  I suspect one has to do blanket spamming over a
very short time in order for it to be effective because of the rapid
adaptation of the filters.

Now, the question would be how many people on the ExI list use Yahoo or AOL
for their receiving address (and *why* would you do so when you can switch
to Gmail)???.

I suspect that what might have to happen is that there be some type of
approval process for mailing list senders who have large numbers of
Yahoo/AOL subscribers.  Alternatively all incoming mail after some free # of
messages gets "delayed" delivery if you haven't paid.  This puts a throttle
on the spammers and gives time for the filtering systems to adjust their
recognition capabilities and toss the incoming spam.

One point to consider is that you are receiving a "free" service (an
off-site mailbox and filtering service).  Unless one is arguing that "free
lunches" are justified you ultimately have to come up with some way of
paying for it.  Its easy enough now for anyone who wants to host a mailing
list and/or mailboxes to pickup a remotely located server (e.g.
UnixShell.com) for $8+/month.  I don't see citing mailing lists is
reasonable reason for objecting to payment for delivery.

Robert
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