Another attempt to prevent spam
Ars Technica reports that a new service is being offered by several major US ISPs to positively flag mail the sender doesn’t wish to be considered to be spam.
Senders of such e-mail will pay (a $399 set-up and vetting fee plus a fraction of a cent per mail) to have a special token added to the mail which will allow the participating ISPs to “fast track” the mail through their spam filters and mark it with a special blue envelope icon.
Any product one buys or registers on the internet these days usually provokes a regular stream of marketing mail from the vendor afterwards, and an unintended side-affect might be to make such offending mail easier for recipients to filter straight into their trash-can. So it will be interesting to see if the idea is as successful as the promoters hope!