A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?

[Thomas Shaddack]

On Wed, 14 May 2003, Sunder wrote:
> Say, things get harder and he has to adapt, well, he'll just charge his
> clients more for the trouble and advertise it as a value add that it's
> garanteed that x% will be read (never mind that idiot client hasn't got a
> way to prove it one way or another.)

There are ways to prove it.

You can use web bugs embedded in HTML mail, fetching an object from a
tracking server. This doesn't work with some mailers, however Outlooks to
version 5.5 are vulnerable for sure and numerous other ones are as well.
This approach is already widely used for checking the validity of email
addresses.

You can count the clickthroughs from the mails, thus not measuring the
impressions themselves, but the raw success. The spammer then can be paid
not per mail sent, but per URL clicked to - leading to a new level of
various confusing and enticing tactics.

You can also share profit with the spammer using some kind of provision
per sale, thus fully outsourcing your advertising.

Possibly there are yet other ways.



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