, The Register 2004-05-05
Microsoft said yesterday it had introduced a white list scheme to allow well-behaved email marketing firms to reach its customers without falling foul of its spam filters.
With the support of Microsoft, more firms are likely to adopt the scheme. Good news for Ironport's sales team. Microsoft is behind the idea because it wants to reclaim email marketing from criminal spammers. For end users the scheme makes it less likely that messages they have requested from companies they do business with will be blocked (i.e. fewer false positives).
The downside is that what users think of as spam and what marketeers think of as spam are sometimes two different things. Excluding the get-rich-quick scams and penis pills it's not too long before we get into areas of potential dispute. In theory, Hotmail's filters could be adapted to apply tougher rules the spam-like email that isn't certified but whether this works in practice is still open to question. We fear Hotmail users will likely end up with just as much junk mail as before - except some of it will be certified as safe. ®
