US businesses will soon pay to send emails

Five of the largest ISPs in the US are to start charging businesses for guaranteed delivery of their emails, in a bid to combat spam.

Goodmail Systems, which provides a service called CertifiedEmail, announced on Thursday that it had signed up Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon as customers. Emails certified using the system are marked with a blue ribbon to show they come from a trusted source, thus bypassing spam filters — a privilege that will cost the sender a quarter of a US cent per email.

The voluntary scheme is aimed at large corporations and financial institutions whose mass mailings are most likely to be spoofed and caught in spam filters. Non-profit groups will be able to use the service for roughly a tenth of the commercial rate.

"With spam and phishing hitting historic highs even in the last six months, we have seen the limits of technologies which attempt to filter out the bad email," said Goodmail's chief executive, Richard Gingras. "Consumers want their email system to let them know which email is real and safe to open and act on."

Peter Castleton, director of Verizon's consumer broadband services, said that phishing and fraud were eroding trust in email as a medium. "A certification service, such as CertifiedEmail, enables us to help restore that trust and makes it easier for consumers to identify legitimate email messages," he said.

According to Goodmail, seven US ISPs are now using CertifedEmail, accounting for 60 percent of the US population. Goodmail — which takes up to 50 percent of the revenue generated by the scheme — will for now only approve mail sent by companies and organisations which have been operational for a year or more. Ordinary users can still apply to be whitelisted by individual ISPs, which effectively provides the same trusted status.