Do you think charging 1 cent per email will curb spam. I get

[demosincebirth]

a ton of spam-mail every week and send, maybe, five a day. I think they should. Your thoughts.

I know...the spam filter, but many still get through.

[Richard D]

1. A lot more than that . . .

didn't stop junk mail.

[demosincebirth]

8. I read the some spamers send millions of emails a day. That would be quite a chunck of dough

[Rick Myers]

2. Don't know how you would enforce it...

[demosincebirth]

10. If your IP could be able to do it, they certainly would find a way to charge and collect.

[shraby]

3. No it won't. I like free email which actually isn't so free when

you figure the access charges. Bite your tongue.

[TommyO]

4. We already pay enough for our cable modem, we don't need additional charges

so you can receive fewer emails a week. Learn how to set up your junk mail filters and rules in your mail client, it goes a long way towards taming spam.

[Xipe Totec]

7. They could put a cap

say the first 5,000 outgoing e-mails per year are free. Then you pay a penny each.

Sadly, even this would not work because spam originates from botnets.

Most people whose machines are being used to spew spam, are not even aware that they are part of the problem.

[demosincebirth]

12. Thats exactly what I was going to suggest, also.

[David in Canada]

19. Correct

My computer was infected by a bot that sent spam from my e-mail account. The bot even cleared the sent box so it would not be obvious.

I only found out when the mailer daemon sent back a bounced e-mail several days later. I was very careful and have up-to-date Anti-Virus software plus Ad-Aware and Spybot and still didn't catch it.

It was a fresh bot and took a few days for the downloaded updates to catch it.

Personally, I prefer simply deleting a spam e-mail than having to spend to send it. All it would do is make people e-mail less, thus impeding communication. Also, don't forget, some people are poor and have to use dialup or go to the library to use a computer.

[Duer 157099]

5. Only if I get the money

I will allow everyone to send me gazillions of emails per day if they'll pay me a cent for each one! Hell yeah!

[eShirl]

6. get a better spam filter, geez

[Travis_0004]

9. Just because you get spam mail, we should inconvience everybody?

If you don't like it, then stop checking email, but don't think we should charge everybody (and probably waste the money that is made), because you are inconvenienced. Or if you want to pay some money yourself and get a premium spam filter, or use a white-list on your email account, and only accept mail from people on it.

[demosincebirth]

14. Settle down, don't pop a blood vessel...it was only a question.

[aquart]

11. YOU pay it. I can cope.

[demosincebirth]

13. I guess the consensus is a big fat NO..

[Wickerman]

18. LOL

Guess so. Shame on you for having an idea.

:-)

[cynatnite]

15. I'm cheap...I'd rather delete than pay. n/t

[Egnever]

16. Big fat NO

Perhaps you should stop giving your email address to every tom dick and harry.

A good practice is to get a free throw away email address you use for shopping sites or other things that ask for your email and give your personal email only to friends and family.

Another solution is to get a spam filter. Spam fighter has a free version that works great http://www.spamfighter.com/

[4lbs]

17. Well, keep it free, but identify the accounts that seem to send out thousands of emails per month,

every month.

Even when email was in it's heyday before text messaging, twitter, IM'ing, etc., I knew of very few individuals that sent out 3000+ emails per month. That's 100 emails per day from a person.

So, accounts that frequently send out thousands of emails per month are likely spammers, and those particular accounts should be charged 1 cent per email.

Keep it free for everyone else that uses email responsibly.

[demosincebirth]

22. You make a good point. nt

[Historic NY]

20. you need to find a better spam blocker, I don't get nearly as many as I used too.

Check your opt outs, make sure when you download something that you don't forget to check off about not wanting more contacts..lots of small stuff.

I used ad ware, malware bytes, spybot search & destroy to kill off stuff. Do a more frequent cookie & temp file dump too.

[TexasObserver]

21. NOOOOoooooooooo! They won't pay it, but we will.

Setting up a tax structure for emails? No way. Can you imagine the kind of government monitoring and intrusion? And how's it going to be enforced and collected?

Please bury this idea.

[anigbrowl]

23. Payable to who?

It's total bullshit. Email used to be metered back in the day. There's a good reason that it isn't any more. I think this is about as likely to be effective as DU charging $1 to post a stupid thread. Really, imagine if they did that, what do you think would happen? everyone would move to some other message baord. Charge 1 cent per email, then someone will just write a new mail protocol and tell the people levying the charge to stick their metering system up their ass.

If you have a spam problem, install a spam filter, get your ISP to install a spam filter, or move to gmail which has an amazing spam filter.