Seems to be some confusion about what messages are eligible to be certified
as CertifiedEmail. Let me clarify that:
Our AUP (http://www.goodmailsystems.com/aup.pdf) makes it clear that
prospecting messages are not allowed. To use CertifiedEmail you must have
permission or an established relationship with the recipient.
Goodmail receiving partners can define further restrictions for messages
addressed to their mailboxes. Yahoo!'s initial testing is indeed limited to
transactions only. See for example our press release of October 2005:
http://www.goodmailsystems.com/news/pressrelease102605.php
or statements by Yahoo! in various fora, e.g.:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tech_law_prof/2006/02/the_problem_wit.html.
As long as this is the case, a non-transactional CertifiedEmail message sent
to a Yahoo! mailbox will be rejected. How do we know it's not transactional?
The cryptographic token includes a field for the message type. It is
self-asserted by the sender and it would be a violation of the AUP to have
an incorrect value. Remember that the system is identity-based and that
senders are held accountable.
NB: There are no additional restrictions beyond Goodmail's AUP when
addressing AOL mailboxes.
From a sender's perspective, using CertifiedEmail for transactions makes a
lot of sense. Obviously as an anti-phishing tool but also as a tool to
reduce customer care costs (e.g.: a large online travel company was quoted
in the NYT saying that 20% of all online purchases end up with a phone call
because the recipient did not get his itinerary or her e-ticket
confirmation).
Again from a sender's perspective, there's a strong ROI case for marketing
messages too. An article in Primedia online listed the following parties
among CertifiedEmail winners: ISPs ("they save processing power, they make a
few million bucks in stamp sales, they have happier users"), users ("Less
hassle getting through their inbox") and "marketers with real permission who
get more than a quarter of a cent of value out of bothering you (and again,
if it's not worth a quarter of a cent to you, it's hardly worth three
seconds of my time)". Among the losers in that article: "marketers who
measure tonnage".
Hope this made it all clearer now.
Daniel T. Dreymann
Co-Founder & SVP Product, Engineering & Operations
Goodmail Systems, Inc.
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