Trusted Spam

This one will amuse you guys a bit. The folks at TRUSTe, ePrivacy Group, MSN, and DoubleClick are all putting together a "trusted senders" group of advertisers that they are hoping will not be classified as spam by ISP filters when they send advertising emails to you. The angle being that people hate spam for fear of fraud, and not because it's cluttering up their inbox, especially those poor guys who pay-per-minute on dialup and get those advertisements with attachments. Good one huh?

"Our approach is to rise above the traditional reactive e-mail filters and identify the good (e-mails) so they can be elevated," Schiavone said. "It benefits everybody along the e-mail chain. Senders agree to abide by the privacy principles independently verified by Truste. They have agreed to make themselves accountable to consumers."