An email server full of spam messages.
Photograph: Ian Waldie/GettyThe decision by AOL and Yahoo to bring in a pay-per-email programme to stop spam has hit the headlines, but it's getting a mixed reaction from experts.
The "postage stamp" debate is one that cuts deep for spam watchers. Opinion even differs on the extent of the problem (Guardianistas Charles Arthur and Simon Jeffery have posited different slants recently).
Clearly, though, everyone has the same ultimate question: how do you stop spam?
Different camps offer different answers. Many suggest that tighter control over identification is necessary, and that users should have better control over who they receive email from. This method - authentication - basically involves cross-checking the email's postal details to make sure it's being sent legitimately. But it involves a few fundamental changes to the way email is sent, so it's not popular with those who want an easily implemented solution.
For others, the paid-for email model offers an answer. This is because it costs very, very little to send millions of spam emails. In this piece we ran in Technology Guardian, one spam scammer revealed that he gets around a 1% success rate on the targeted spam he sends. Make people pay for sending it, and they won't bother, goes the argument.
But critics say that using an old answer to a new problem simply won't work: we can't overlay the postage stamp model onto electronic distribution. Plus, if businesses start having to pay to ensure that their email gets to its destination then (as Jack Schofield pointed out on Technology Blog this weekend) how long until consumers have to as well?
One anti-spam campaigner I spoke to told me he was concerned at the emergence of a two-tier service which went against the fundamental traditions of the internet.
There is also potential for abuse in the postage stamp model. What the pay-per-email model doesn't necessarily stop is corporate networks being hijacked to send spam: in the vast majority of cases, spammers don't even use their own computers to send mail. Right now, many company computers end up being hacked and used to send thousands of messages. If your firm pays 0.1p for every email it sends, and one machine gets turned into a zombie that sends 5 million emails, it would sting you for £5,000. I can't think of anybody who'd fancy that.
