Will Users Donate a Penny Per Email to Fight Spam, Yahoo Wonders | Epicenter | Wired.com
Yahoo’s researchers want you to voluntarily slap a one-cent stamp on your outgoing e-mails, with proceeds going to charity, in a bid to cut down on spam. Can doing good really do away with spam, which consumes 33 terawatt hours of electricity every year, not to mention way too much of our time?
The idea behind CentMail is that paying to send e-mail — even a single cent — differentiates a real e-mail from spam blasts, and thus, spam filters can be adjusted to let the stamped mail sail right through, according to a report from New Scientist. Users would get to choose which charity benefits from their penny missives, which the researchers hope will convince people to pay CentMail for something that’s currently free.
via Will Users Donate a Penny Per Email to Fight Spam, Yahoo Wonders | Epicenter | Wired.com.
Tags: CentMail, charity, email, Epicenter, spam, stamped, Wired, Yahoo