Yahoo, AOL to offer pay-to-send e-mail

SAN FRANCISCO – Two of the world’s biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user’s mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters, representatives of both companies said Sunday.

The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams. In exchange for paying, e-mail senders will be guaranteed their messages won’t be filtered and will alert recipients they’re legitimate.

Both companies have long filtered e-mail by searching for keywords commonly contained in spam and fraudulent e-mail. AOL also strips images and Web links from many messages to prevent the display of pornographic pictures and malicious Web addresses. Both practices sometimes falsely identify legitimate messages as junk mail, making life difficult for businesses that rely on e-mail.

AOL, a division of New York-based Time Warner Inc., will start offering the service in the next two months. Company spokeswoman Karen Mahon said Sunday that Sunnyvale-based Yahoo will begin offering a similar service in the coming months.

The plan, while it’s optional and would apply to only a fraction of people sending e-mail, amounts to a reversal in the economics of the Internet because it would charge message senders rather than those receiving them.

AOL and Yahoo said the program, which is being offered through a company called Goodmail Systems, will target online retailers and others that send large amounts of e-mail. In exchange for a payment and a pledge to contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, the companies would be ensured their e-mails aren’t filtered out.