Marlborough firm pushes payment system to cut spam
Yahoo Inc. and AOL hope to clean up their e-mail systems by charging senders a fee for each e-mail sent to their subscribers. It's a radical, controversial idea -- and, Phillip Raymond says, a lousy one.
It's not that Raymond, chief executive of Vanquish Inc. in Marlborough, is averse to charging for e-mail.
''We think that the idea of using economics is long overdue," he said. ''It is the only way of getting to the heart of the problem."
But Raymond said that the Yahoo and Time Warner Inc. AOL service are going about it all wrong. At tomorrow's annual antispam conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Raymond will promote his company's vision of an e-mail system that forces only spammers to pay, while preserving free e-mail for everybody else.
The Vanquish system is very different from the AOL-Yahoo plan. In cooperation with Goodmail Systems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., AOL and Yahoo will guarantee the delivery of messages sent by organizations, if they pay one-quarter cent to 1 cent for each message. Mail sent by these organizations will be ''certified" as legitimate and will bypass spam filters, which often collect legitimate mail by mistake. The Internet companies and Goodmail will split the revenue generated by the program.
Raymond said that it's unfair to make honest mailers pay for each message. And he thinks that any fees should go to the recipient of the e-mail, since he or she is the one who's harmed by receiving unwanted messages.
So Raymond is pushing an alternative approach. Vanquish plans to introduce software that can be installed on the e-mail computers of Internet service providers. The software will be able to detect whether the sender has posted a cash bond -- generally 5 cents. Messages that include such a bond are sent directly to the recipient, without passing through spam filters. If a recipient doesn't want the message, he or she rejects the message and keeps the nickel. ''The recipient ought to be rewarded," Raymond said. ''It's his time you're using." But if the message is accepted, the sender pays nothing.
The Vanquish system would cost spammers millions of dollars, but would cost little for, say, a bank or credit card company that bills its customers via e-mail. After posting the bond, they'd pay only for the occasional message rejection. And while spam filters currently weed out as much as one-fifth of legitimate business e-mail, according to the research firm Return Path Inc., the Vanquish approach would ensure that all messages are delivered.
Mark Levitt, who tracks the e-mail industry for IDC Corp. in Framingham, has no use for the Vanquish plan, or for the Yahoo-AOL system. Levitt said that any system that charges money for sending e-mail is a bad idea.
''I think there are better ways that don't cost legitimate senders of e-mail money," Levitt said.
For instance, researchers are working on technologies like Microsoft Corp.'s Sender ID, or Yahoo's DomainKeys systems. These might be able to identify the true sources of e-mail messages, without requiring the sender to pay a fee. ''Charging money for individual messages is just a way to raise money," said Levitt, and is not a practical solution to the problems of spam and e-mail fraud.
But Raymond is determined to make his Vanquish system a standard feature of the Internet. His company plans to give away its software to Internet providers. And Raymond said that AOL has expressed an interest in testing the Vanquish system, as a possible alternative to its deal with Goodmail.
AOL and Yahoo have come under fire from nonprofit groups and small businesses, which say they can't afford to pay to send e-mail to their millions of members and customers. In an attempt to stem the opposition that has developed in response to its plan, AOL has said it would offer the certified e-mail service free to nonprofit groups and political advocacy organizations.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 