Goodmail Systems Inc. today announced that Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner and Verizon are supporting the company's CertifiedEmail trusted class e-mail for users of their e-mail services. Already used by AOL, AT&T and Yahoo!, CertifiedEmail messages are certified to be authentic e-mail from legitimate senders and are specially marked with a blue ribbon envelope so that consumers know which commercial and non-profit e-mails in their inbox are real.

Introduced in 2006, CertifiedEmail is a trusted-class delivery option offered only to qualifying, legitimate commercial and non-profit e-mailers for messages to existing customers and users who have specifically opted in to receive such communications. Once accredited by Goodmail, these senders' e-mail messages are delivered with cryptographically secure tokens which participating ISPs detect. CertifiedEmail messages are labeled with a unique blue ribbon icon in the e-mail program, enabling consumers to immediately distinguish the legitimate messages they want to receive from messages of unknown authenticity or safety. The announcement follows a national poll that indicated the majority of consumers would be more likely to open and read e-mail if the sending company displays a certified icon in the e-mail program.

"With spam and phishing hitting historic highs even in the last six months, we have seen the limits of technologies which attempt to filter out the bad e-mail," said Goodmail co-founder and CEO Richard Gingras. "Consumers want their e-mail system to let them know which e-mail is real and safe to open and act on. They want an end to the frustration of having to guess whether an e-mail is real or not. These ISPs—and the senders that send CertifiedEmail—care about their customers' safety."

Users of participating ISPs need do nothing extra to receive CertifiedEmail. Their existing webmail programs that they currently use to read e-mail will simply show a new icon, a blue ribbon envelope, that means a message is a CertifiedEmail. The icon appears in both the inbox list view and in a special pane above the message when opened. The blue ribbon icon is universal across all ISPs and mailbox providers supporting CertifiedEmail.

For more information, check out the press release.