RE: Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

["Larry Seltzer" <larry () larryseltzer com>]

> > > Please re-read my example. I was supposing a (non-spam) mailing by an 
> > > ISP of 1 million, of which 100,000 goes to AOL members, which means a 
> > > cost of $1000.

> Right. I was pointing out that in *reality*, GoodMail will bill on the 
> *total* volume, not the volume that goes to GoodMail customers.  So if 
> you send a mailing of 1M pieces of mail, of which *one* goes to AOL, 
> you're *still* on the hook for $10K. 

I just got off the phone with Richard Gingras, co-founder and CEO of
Goodmail and asked him about this, among other things. As I suspected, it's
crap. The only messages for which senders are billed are the ones processed
by recipient ISPs (actually recipient MTAs I guess). You could send out all
1 million messages in your example with tokens, but only be billed for the
100,000 AOL customers (and any others which had Goodmail service). 

And they have not finalized a rate card, but expect the cost to be in the
neighborhood of 1/4 cent per message.

I have to say I'm astonished at the amount of misinformation out there about
this service, and some of it is so naïve I can't keep a straight face
reading it. The Goodmail people seem to think that it's all been planted by
their competitors (Spamhaus and the like, I suppose) but I'm more suspicious
of credulousness in the press and a desire for a fantastic story ("Will you
have to pay for email from now on?!?!?!")

Larry Seltzer
eWEEK.com Security Center Editor
http://security.eweek.com/
http://blog.ziffdavis.com/seltzer
Contributing Editor, PC Magazine
larryseltzer () ziffdavis com 



_______________________________________________
Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.