What's in a Name?

A recently proposed top-level domain (such as .com or. org) could change the way many businesses send out legitimate marketing e-mails. The .mail domain is under consideration by ICANN, the Internet's governing body. The group behind it, Spamhaus, is a British-based anti-spam entity. John Reid, a spokesperson for Spamhaus, is careful to point out that .mail is not an anti-spam system.

Here's how it would work: A business would be able to register the .mail version of a domain they already own (such as amazon.mail). That would then become a device to verify the e-mails they send as legitimate. Those messages would not be subject to the blacklist e-mail filtering that currently catches both spam and some legitimate e-mails as well.