Goodmail: A Guide To Extortion

If you are the type of person that is constantly looking for a way to con millions of dollars from thousands of reputable and ethical businesses, consider modeling your methods after Richard Gingras, Founder & CEO of Goodmail Systems. His company's CertifiedEmail service provides a method for, what else, companies to legally spam your inbox by paying to ensure their exclusion from spam filters.

Before I rip Mr. Gingras a new one, let me explain how this abomination of technology works.

Goodmail Systems has partnered with two of the biggest internet and e-mail service providers in the world, America Online and Yahoo!. Once the system is implemented, companies wishing to receive this certification for their e-mail will have to pay a small fee (a fraction of one cent) for every e-mail they send. When a certified e-mail arrives in your inbox, it will be identified by an icon of blue ribbon next to the subject line.

It is important to mention that this is not a method of spam prevention, and is not publicly advertised as one. In fact, this system provides little benefit to the end-user other than being able to identify companies willing to spend the cash to make sure you see their message.

The recent controversy surrounding the service really highlights the purpose, and vice versa.

Goodmail stands to make, potentially, billions of dollars by convincing companies around the world that getting their e-mail certified through the service is a necessity. However, instead of protecting the end-user from spam and e-mail scams, this actually creates more spam by allowing anybody who signs up for the service to bypass spam filters with whatever content they can dream up.

This whole system essentially amounts to extortion.

But before you start writing angry letters to Mr. Gingras, the attorney general, or your closest congress-person, you should know that Goodmail Systems is not the only company profiting from this. AOL & Yahoo! will be receiving an unknown percentage of revenue for their participation in this scam.

It seems as if Goodmail is just the middle-man, but that doesn't make them any less guilty.