Around 50 charities, non-profit organisations and civil liberties groups have put up resistance to what they have called AOL's "email tax" by forming a coalition and setting up a protest website called .
The new Certified Email service will charge large email senders to authenticate their mail so that it is not filtered out as spam by the email accounts run by AOL and other ISPs. It is provided by a third party called Goodmail.
AOL has responded to the opposition by giving "qualifying" non-profit organisations two options, of which one is new.
The new option is that AOL will pay for their sign-up costs to a third-party email authentication service. It is in discussions with a number of third-party services and expects to be able to offer the option in the next 90 days.
The second option is to use AOL's own authentication service, the Enhanced White List, which just covers delivery to AOL members. AOL said it was clarifying this because there was confusion in the marketplace.
Charles Stiles, AOL postmaster, said: "Our announcement today guarantees that every certified not-for-profit will get the same benefits as private-sector companies that have decided to utilise Goodmail's Certified Email system."
AOL may roll out the Certified Email service to Europe and elsewhere in the second half of the year.
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