• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, March 6, 2006

In an effort to counteract the "confusion" surrounding a planned e-mail certification service, AOL Friday said it would pay the fees of non-profits that wish to use a third party--like Bonded Sender or Habeas--to prove that they're not spammers.

"We want to make it absolutely crystal clear that not-for-profits and not-for-profit advocacy groups are going to have a number of choices for getting their e-mail delivered with all links and images enabled," said Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman. He added that AOL announced the plan last week "because of the confusion that has been generated in the marketplace" by groups critical of the company's imminent e-mail certification system.

AOL's subsidy announcement came the same week that online civil liberties organization EFF and a coalition of other groups launched a protest of the deal between AOL and Goodmail for guaranteed delivery of e-mail, with links intact and images enabled, when senders pay a fee. Among the critics were nonprofits, like the Association of Online Cancer Resources, which rely on e-mail to communicate.

AOL has always maintained that the Goodmail program is voluntary, and that it intends to deliver legitimate e-mail regardless of whether senders use Goodmail, but some watchdogs and advocacy groups are skeptical. They charge that some legitimate e-mail currently doesn't get through, because spam filters already wrongly identify wanted e-mail as spam. With the Goodmail arrangement, they argue, AOL now has a financial incentive to let its own spam filters degrade in hopes that senders will start paying for guaranteed delivery.

Last week, a coalition of disparate groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, MoveOn.Org Civic Action and Gun Owners of America launched an online petition at DearAOL.com, urging the company to abandon its planned deal with Goodmail. By Sunday, the petition had garnered more than 31,000 signatures.

AOL's Graham reiterated that the company intends to implement the Goodmail deal, adding that some sort of certification system will help consumers distinguish between legitimate banks and phishers posing as financial institutions. "AOL may never see eye-to-eye with organizations that believe that there must never be a system similar to certified e-mail," Graham said. "We continue to believe that certified e-mail remains a very critical step that's valuable to consumers by tackling phishing and identity theft online."

AOL hasn't yet decided which company it will work with for the nonprofit service, but the program could easily cost more than five figures annually. Presumably, AOL will negotiate fees with whichever company it selects. Currently, Bonded Sender charges nonprofits a $400 application fee and asks them to pay a $250 yearly bond to ensure they're not sending spam--but only if they send no more than 1 million messages a month. E-mail senders that distribute up to 5 million messages a month are charged an $850 application fee, $4,000 annual fee, and $1,000 bond; those sending more than 50 million messages a month must pay a $1,500 application fee, $20,000 yearly fee, and $4,000 bond.