News
Goodmail: CertifiedEmail will not reduce spam
Posted on April 11, 2006

Legislators and advocacy groups were surprised at a California Senate committee hearing last week when Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras said its fee-based CertifiedEmail program that AOL and Yahoo are implementing is not meant to reduce spam.

"That's what I thought was the selling point: that it was going to reduce spam and phishing," said state Sen. Dean Florez, a Democrat who chairs the state Senate Select Committee on E-Commerce, Wireless Technology and Consumer Driven Programming.

Rather than helping to reduce spam Gingras claimed that the point is to allow users to verify who important messages are really from, like a message from your bank or credit card company.

"To suggest that the introduction of CertifiedEmail is going to prevent spammers from sending spam or phishers from trying to phish -- we have not said it, nor would any expert say it," Gingras told DM News.

The Goodmail CEO's statement at the hearing, however, differs from recent remarks by AOL concerning the program's benefits.

"As we get ready to testify at the hearing ... we are also working diligently to protect our members' safety and security by preparing implementation of the anti-spam, anti-phishing CertifiedEmail program," AOL spokesman Nicholas J. Graham said in a March 30 report on DMNews.com.

The committee also heard from several small groups still concerned that their email will be stopped in spam filters and that they will be charged a fee - even though AOL has offered to cover nonprofits' CertifiedEmail expenses.

Florez wants California to have oversight on the AOL program and suggested that the state may get involved in regulating e-mail authentication programs.

"Who is liable if phishing or a [virus] gets into the CertifiedEmail system?" Florez said. "AOL and Goodmail said they are going to be liable in that type of exchange."

Gingras agreed.

The state Senate committee plans to watch the program and take AOL and Goodmail to task if things go wrong, especially if nonprofit groups encounter problems.

Goodmail was founded aiming to charge postage for all mail, but it has narrowed its focus to mail sent by companies and major nonprofit organizations. It does not envision that individuals will pay to have their e-mail delivered.

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