It seems that Mr. Gates’ prescient prediction that charging vendors to send email through Microsoft’s email networks (MSN and Hotmail) to reduce Sp*m is about to come true.
According to CIO Today, Microsoft is now employing “IronPort Anti-Spam Technology.”
“IronPort” is a paid “whitelist” for people who send “bulk emails” (including newsletter publishers, ezine publishers, affiliate managers, mini-course operators, and basically anyone who has a subscription email list ).
If you send any kind of broadcast email to everyone on your list, this applies to you.
If you want your email transmissions to get through their filters, you have to pay a hefty fee and post a “bonus.”
Here are some facts about this developing story:
1. They charge by the amount of email you send per month, but the minimum charge is:
$375 application fee, plus
$500 annual license fee, plus
$500 “Bonus” Fee.
That’s $1,375.00 just to get into the game.
If you want to see the complete breakdown, go here [https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp]
2. If you go over the “complaint” threshold of 1 complaint per month, they will deduct $20 from your bail fee for each complaint to “fine” you for being mean.
That sounds good on the surface, but here’s a scenario to test the size:
Your competitor/enemy/network “psycho” signs up for 50 free email accounts at HotMail and complains about you every month when you send out your newsletter.
49 complaints (50 – 1 complaint allowed) for $20 per complaint gives $980 in fines.
Now, can you dispute the fines? Sure, absolutely!
But how much will you lose in time, energy and effort by disputing the allegations? (I guess it’s much more than that).
You can check all the “rules” here [https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp]
Here are the program details straight from the horse’s mouth… [https://www.bondedsender.com]
Here’s my take on all of this (which fell to me out of nowhere today):
First, don’t get me wrong… I hate spam with a passion!
I spend at least an hour a day fighting it (up from 3 hours a day just a few weeks ago before shutting down some 2 dozen email addresses that were harvested by spam bots in the past few years).
That said, this whole “IronPort” thing sounds and smacks of “whitelisting” extortion to me.
Why?
Here’s the basic premise: “Pay to have your email go through our filters, or else you risk very likely that your email won’t get through.”
In fact, here’s a *direct quote* from their website [https://www.bondedsender.com/faqs/sender.jsp]:
“What if I don’t link my email? You’re rolling the dice and taking chances with spam filters, blacklists, and bulk folders. Some days all of your email may be delivered; other days, between 30 and 50% clogged.”
Reminds you of a cheesy mob movie on late night TV:
Me: “Hey Bugsy, what if I don’t pay my ‘protection’ money this month? What if I confront you and refuse to pay?”
Bugsy: “Well, maybe nothing will happen to you because the Boss isn’t paying attention when I tell him you decided not to pay. On the other hand, maybe I’ll hit you a little… or maybe– I’LL BREAK YOUR LEG with this baseball bat! Go ahead, don’t pay us… then we’ll see what happens!”
Now back to my question: “Why should I pay a huge fee to send emails to people who have subscribed to my lists?”
Microsoft’s (and soon other ISPs’) argument is that uncontrolled spam on the web is costing them a lot of money to send emails that no one wants to read.
Well, if that’s the case, aren’t email users shelling out cash or credit to pay their ISPs for email services (mine charges me $40 a month for cable) or paying for free services like HotMail or Yahoo? Mail when seeing advertising on each page?
I was under the impression that we were already paying for emails…and last time I checked, there was no place to put a stamp!
Okay, even if we get past that and accept the argument that legitimate email senders should pay a fee to get on that big “white list in the sky” somewhere… there are still two very important considerations here:
1. First, what about the little one who starts to do very well?
You know, the little newsletter publisher who puts out a big ezine or free report or whatever and gets a lot of subscribers and then wants to email them on a regular basis?
Let’s say you start making $20,000.00 a year from your ezine… now you’re supposed to shell out 6-10% of your earnings to send your messages? (And that’s if they never get a ticket!)
Do they have to be penalized for being successful?
Apparently yes, if this system gains wide acceptance by all the big ISPs and email service providers!
2. Second, what about the high potential for abuse at the hands of unethical competitors and plain idiots that populate the Internet?
I know it might sound hard to believe, but there are psychopaths out there who will sign up for a bunch of free email accounts just to cause trouble.
(This is not paranoia! I had a user who signed up, definitely opted in to my website, had emails routed through a SpamCop address, so SpamCop blacklisted me until I could fix it. Oh, and guess who owns it. SpamCop…IronPort, that’s who!)
Now, an idiot making waves with 100 email accounts won’t put a dent in the pockets of most of the big players in the email arena…it’ll just be a business expense to them.
But for the “small” guy, fighting that potential abuse and fees could seriously cripple and even kill a startup…and that, in my opinion, is a serious problem.
In my opinion, all this is going to do is eliminate the little guy and make it easier for the big companies to email the rest of us.
A small newsletter publisher will find it prohibitively expensive to pay for the service, and some giant company will just keep pumping out email because they have the staff and resources to fight the inevitable complaints.
And let’s face it, if a big company is paying a license fee of $10,000.00 a year plus a $4,000.00 bond, how aggressive do you think the people at IronTrust will be in getting rid of them?
In my opinion, not much.
Bottom line: Despite my ranting, I actually think this is a step in the right direction (albeit a wobbly, drunken, inconvenient one).
You have to do something to fight spam.
However, at this point, this whole system has (in my opinion) too many unanswered questions, especially for us little ones.
Namely:
- Do I really need to do this if I’m a small guy operating and developing a newsletter?
- What happens if I receive unfounded spam complaints?
- At what level does it make financial sense for me to do this?
- What if my newsletter doesn’t make a huge profit… am I supposed to give up the revenue I make just to send my emails?
To its apparent credit, Yahoo! is also trying to pioneer a solution, but this one doesn’t seem (at this point) like it will cost publishers or subscribers money (and I like the sound of that). http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys
But with so much at stake (on both sides), this issue is a long way from any satisfactory resolution.
Stay tuned for more updates as events warrant…