ROCHESTER, New York - November 24, 2009 - Epostmarks today introduced Postmarked Email, which combines the protection of the U.S. Postal Service® (Postal Service™) with Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail platform. Postmarked Email safeguards email messages using United States Postal Service Electronic Postmark® (USPS EPM®) technology; an auditable time-and-date stamping service that verifies the authenticity of electronically transmitted documents and files. The combination of CertifiedEmail and EPM® provides legally compliant email messaging, and is fully protected by the Postal Service, the most trusted U.S. government agency. The business benefits also include cost savings, improved green score cards, and increased consumer trust in online communications.
Nearly 75 percent of all U.S. citizens are now online, making business-related email convenient for most people, especially for transactional messages such as bills, statements, and notifications. Until now, use of email messaging for private and business matters has largely been avoided due to inherent trust problems related to electronic transmission of private or sensitive messages. With the increasing amount of client communications required by federal laws regulating the financial services, telecommunications, and utilities industries, there exists a significant market need for a trusted electronic delivery method.
“Postmarked Email lets you send email with all the confidence of paper mail” said Jason Curtis, CEO of Epostmarks, Inc. “By combining the legal strength and enforcement of the U.S. Postal Service with Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail platform, a new benchmark for trust has been established in email.”
Postmarked Email appears with CertifiedEmail’s widely recognized Blue Ribbon icon in a user's email inbox, and allows protected email to display the widely recognized Postal Service™ eagle logo, enabling users to easily identify Postal Service™ protected email. Electronically tampering with USPS EPM® protected email carries a similar penalty to tampering with traditional mail. By extending legal protections and enforcement to email that are commonly found with traditional mail service, Postmarked Email sets the stage for a new era of greater trust in email messages.
We are very excited to work with Epostmarks who created such an innovative application of the Electronic Postmark with Goodmail Systems,” said Gregory S. Crabb, Inspector in Charge, Revenue Fraud and Cyber Intelligence, U.S. Postal Inspection Service. “With the federal authority and protection of the Postal Service, Postmarked Email will bring a new level of trust to electronic communications, ensuring a safer online experience for U.S. citizens.”
Email as a business and transactional tool has traditionally lacked trust in the public eye due to phishers and hackers executing highly publicized online fraud. Postmarked Email eliminates fraud by sending a cryptographically secure token that ensures the authenticity of a message. And, the protection of the Postal Service™ adds a greater level of trust enabling a safe, secure method for digital communications.
“Consumer concerns around trust and privacy have slowed adoption of email as the primary way that businesses speak to their customers” said Peter Horan, CEO of Goodmail Systems. “But with EPM® technology, Postmarked Email solves these challenges, offering a comprehensive approach to security and trust that will allow businesses to reduce their cost of communications while also strengthening their relationship with their consumers.”
Postmarked Email is available everywhere Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail is available (via AOL, Comcast, MySpace, Cox, Verizon, Yahoo and others).
]]>I've been hearing about this TLD for quite a few years now and am happy that .POST is likely here for good. The potential of this concept, while often exaggerated, is serious. .POST represents another method for Posts to establish trustworthy destinations online, further expanding their trusted framework for global exchange. The summary of contractual provisions references the UPU special status at ICANN. I find that juxtaposing this special status at ICANN with the special legal authority that Posts have in their native country makes this decision seem inevitable.
Public comment on the idea is going on until the end of November. Check out the details and comment here: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-02nov09-en.htm
]]>Today, the estimated annual cost of spam and phishing combined exceeds $113 billion in direct monetary and non-monetary losses. This recurring cost to the US economy is nothing short of astounding. Despite efforts from both government and private industry independently, the costs associated with spam and phishing continue to grow. After spending almost a decade researching spam and phishing, and doing business with experts in the private and public sectors, I believe a public-private partnership that incorporates the U.S. Postal Service Electronic Postmark (EPM) platform is one of the best methods of mitigating the negative impacts of spam and phishing while contributing to a sustainable U.S. economy. Our supporters agree although it will take significant time and hard work by many for this to work effectively.
A necessary element for this service to run properly includes a tokenization platform that enables delivery and receipt of multiple classes of email within the existing email ecosystem. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as AOL and Yahoo! that adopt the platform guarantee the delivery and full functionality of these various classes of email by allowing them to bypass filters used to block spam and phishing emails. This enables a valuable way for the trusted brand and legal enforcement of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to extend into email.
I believe that the service described above, which Epostmarks named PostmarkedEmail, has the potential to save the U.S. economy billions annually. In addition to cost savings, I believe that national implementation of the PostmarkedEmail service will create new jobs and provide existing employees with modern skills, particularly within the USPS.
In prior articles, I elaborated on the costs to consumers and businesses due to spam and phishing.
]]>The growing severity of phishing attacks and average volume of emails consumers and employees receive are both impetus for a more effective method of identifying trustworthy (and untrustworthy) emails.
This year, the projected financial cost of phishing is at least $5.8 billion, up from $3.2 billion lost by 6 million adults (or 3.3% of phishing email recipients) in 2007. The number of phishing victims in 2007 rose drastically from 2.3 million (or 2.3% of phishing email recipients) in the prior year. The average loss per successful phishing attack was $886 in 2007. In 2008, phishing activity averaged around 1 in 244.9 (0.41%) emails. A total of 124 million U.S. online adults received or believe they’ve received a phishing email in 2007 with an average of 80 phishing attempts per online adult annually. Our research indicates that the volume of phishing averaged .53% between 2007 and 2008, and has remained relatively constant despite technological and enforcement efforts
As a result of the 3.6 million reported annual phishing cases, at least $800 million in direct employee time is lost in handling claims, conducting investigations, and reimbursing victims. This estimate does not include the cost of prosecutions or other enforcement measures.
The total annual non-monetary consumer cost of phishing is estimated at $1.8 billion. Of the 3.6 million annual email fraud cases, roughly 85% incurred minor non-monetary costs, totaling roughly $450 million in lost time. The remaining $1.35 billion annual cost is generated by 15% of the cases incurring significant non-monetary costs. Losses are due to one or more of the following in each case:
Assuming a modest increase in fraud reports since 2002, this figure is likely to be much higher today.
]]>Combined, U.S. corporate and consumer spam are at least a $108.8 billion annual problem, $92.2 billion of which is due to lost consumer and employee productivity and another $16.6 billion in preventative and administrative costs - IT and Helpdesk costs, respectively. The staggering (and rising) costs of both the price of current spam countermeasures and the inefficiencies of these countermeasures implicate a broken model and market. The economic burden of spam is placed entirely on the victims of such perpetration. Furthermore, the only solutions offered to date are not discrete (constantly needing to be updated and paid for regardless of usage) and thus have widely varied results. Hopefully the figures below elicit the same sense of urgency our team has felt for almost a decade.
At a price of between roughly $.01 and $.04 per email, spam costs the U.S. economy $25.4 billion annually in lost employee productivity. In total, roughly 80% of all U.S. corporate emails are spam. In 2005, the average U.S. worker received at least 30 spam emails per day with 15% of corporate spam filtered by desktop solutions and 49% filtered at the server level. Beyond automated filtering, 36% of all incoming spam gets manually filtered despite widespread adoption of spam filtering software. Without effective countermeasures, this figure will continue to grow.
At an average cost of $2.99 per user per month, the aggregate U.S. corporate IT cost for anti-spam systems is projected to be $5.8 billion in 2009. Assuming all businesses in the U.S. offer this service and will continue to do so especially as spam and phishing become more prevalent, the annual cost for protecting roughly 140 million non-farm employees is not likely to drop below $5 billion.
* In this posting, we will not the costs of detection although they are significant.
Help desk costs of spam in 2009 are projected to amount to $10.8 billion in the U.S., $33.5 billion worldwide. This estimation entails both the operating cost of a help-desk and the email users’ paid time using the service, particularly to retrieve filtered emails. For corporate email users manually filtering spam, this amounts to roughly 9% of the total cost of spam. For desktop and server filtering, the help desk cost is roughly 39% and 34%, respectively.
Consumer spam cost the U.S. economy an additional $66.8 billion in productivity loss in 2007. This figure was estimated assuming an opportunity cost of $.04 to delete each of roughly 1.7 trillion annual unfiltered U.S. consumer spam messages received during non-business hours. The collective time spent deleting these messages could otherwise be allocated to non-primary work, volunteer work, education, or other activities that contribute to our overall economic and social development. Although the opportunity cost varies widely by person and is thus difficult to quantify, it is important to identify this problem and is reasonable to assume that the potential value of this lost time is as high as our primary working time.
]]>I almost always reply,"Only 35% of online consumers use portals for online bill pay, and even fewer—between 6% and 16% in 2007—only receive eStatements."
By now, most financial institutions and billing services offer eStatements and eBilling. But most also fail to effectively convert consumers to electronic services, and reduce costly redundant paper streams. Insufficient consumer convenience and confidence are at the core of slow portal adoption rates and widespread channel redundancies. The result of this market inefficiency is invariably a high cost of time and money for businesses and consumers alike.
NON-ADOPTER RATIONALE
Consumers have myriad reasons for inaction, and often blame businesses for drawbacks in their commercial relationship. After all, the customer is always right. Roughly 6% of non-adopters quit using eServices while 23% are undecided (known as “fence-sitters”) and a whopping 71% refuse to use eServices like eBilling and eStatements (known as “holdouts”). Of the “quitters”, the majority stated they could have been convinced to stay and cited shared savings and improved usability – which we will cover in a later post – as significant reasons for staying. While this is a moderate case for PostmarkedEmail, its value proposition is most noticeable among fence-sitters and holdouts.
Notably, 34% of fence-sitters and holdouts don't want to fall victim to email fraud (phishing). Email notifications are a critical functionality of portals storing eStatements and eBills - how else would I remember to track my spending and pay my bills on various eCommerce sites I regularly manage? Surprisingly, this figure is much lower than the average Web user, which has broader implications about the negative impact of phishing. According to a 2008 AOTA study, 61% of all Internet users are afraid of phishing. Other estimates have gone as high as 87%.
ADOPTER CHALLENGES
Despite eStatement adoption rates of 31–47%, the biggest economic benefit of paper suppression is only realized by a small subset of the business-consumer relationships. Redundant paper streams are prevalent across the gamut with only 6-16% of consumers receiving ONLY eStatements. A recent Striata survey provides some insight into the underlying problems. This survey reveals that almost half of consumers prefer to receive their bills and statements as secure email attachments. Over 50% of all consumers indicated that either secure email or a combination of secure email and web portal access would be satisfactory for them to turn off their paper statements altogether.
The results clearly indicate that secure document delivery via email in conjunction with online access to eStatements and eBills best satisfies current and, more importantly, future consumer preferences.
]]>Naturally, amidst the flurry of day-to-day happenings that vie for our attention and appreciation, we often overlook the importance of email in our personal lives. It is no surprise that as a system so vital to our daily functions, email – like its predecessor, Postal Mail – has been taken for granted by many over the years. Still, when asked to stop and reflect on our preferred modes of dealing with businesses, 67% of adult Internet users in North America favored email while 34% and 35% respectively consider websites and Mail an acceptable commercial mode.S
It is also no surprise that forecasts paint a gloomy picture for physical Mail as opposed to Web-based communication channels. Over the next five years, eMarketer projects that consumer preference of Mail for commercial purposes will plummet 1/3 to 23% popularity. In the face of our financial crisis and earnest desire to modernize our nation's infrastructure, the outlook of physical Mail looks even more grim. On the other hand, new and existing eCommerce channels will continue to rise if not remain relatively constant in the near-term.
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