Spam is much more than a time-sucking nuisance; it also consumes 33 terawatts of electricity per year, according to a McAfee report cited by Wired News. Although most of us delete unsolicited E-mail (which makes up as much as 90 percent of all E-mail), all it takes is a tiny fraction of 1 percent of recipients actually taking advantage of the offer (whether it’s a $1 million transfer of funds from a Nigerian bank or a good deal on mail-order Viagra) to make it worth the spamming.
Filters and other methods of slowing the spam juggernaut often fall short, simply because — by definition — they are responses to new advances in spam technology and therefore one step behind. But Yahoo researchers have proposed a novel solution: Attach a one-cent “stamp” to all outgoing E-mail, thereby identifying it as a legitimate message, as reported by Wired. This would be used in tandem with software that filters out incoming messages that lack postage.
The concept, known as CentMail, is based on the premise that spammers often send literally millions of messages to addresses around the world. So by using CentMail, spammers would have to pay $10,000 to send 1 million E-mails. Without the postage, in theory, their messages would get blocked by filters.
According to the article, it would be relatively simple to use and would allow users to choose which charity organizations get their pennies: “Users would pre-pay, and then a stamp would be automatically added to each outgoing e-mail (presumably, no licking is necessary) and the proceeds would go to the approved charity of the user’s choice. Centmail is currently in a private beta, but you can add your e-mail address (for free!) to be notified when it launches.”
So even if you’re a heavy user of E-mail, as many of us are, 1,000 messages would cost a palatable $10, while cutting down on useless messages (such as replies that say simply “thanks” or otherwise don’t include necessary information), eliminating spam and supporting worthy causes.
Personally, I think it sounds like a great solution. But as I noted earlier, spammers are always one step ahead and potentially could find a way to replicate the code that allows “postage-paid” messages through the filters.
But just imagine a world without spam — isn’t that worth a few pennies?
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
