Companies Sending E-Mail May Soon Pay Some Postage Companies may soon have to buy something like an electronic postage stamp if they want to be certain their e-mail is delivered to customers using AOL and Yahoo accounts.
Currently, the United States Postal Service accepts two electronic stamps, E-stamp and Stamps.com, and is expected to start using Smith's RiposteMark on a test basis within the next six months.
Stamps.com, based in Santa Monica, Calif., sells a service that lets users buy postage online and print electronic stamps directly onto envelopes, labels or business documents.
Technological fixes like sender authentication and electronic stamps would also take time to carry out, but filtering is already here -- and it is reducing the spammers' messages to feeble signals swamped by a roar of alphanumeric noise.
Stamps.com, a company that permits users to buy postage online and print electronic stamps directly onto envelopes, labels or business documents, said yesterday that it would reduce its work force by 50percentt.
Stamps.com, a service that lets users buy postage online and print electronic stamps directly onto envelopes, labels or business documents, submitted a proposal to the commission for a 4-cent discount on computer-generated postage.
Correction: February 3 , 2004 Tuesday An article in Business Day yesterday about electronic stamps and other proposed deterrents to e-mail spam misstated the affiliation of David Farber, a computer scientist who said electronic postage systems were likely to be too complex and would impose costs on noncommercial users who should be able to send e-mail free.
(Want to download electronic stamps? Stamps.com is one of only two places that let you do it).
PitneyWorks.com sells electronic stamps and also lets small businesses create direct-marketing material online; Pitney then provides printing, metering and mailing services.
