Necessity = Invention

A pretty neat example of the free market at work: GoodMail

E-mail certified by Goodmail is guaranteed to be authentic and will display a blue ribbon in the e-mail to let consumers know it’s certified. Goodmail has relationships with AOL, Yahoo, Comcast, AT&T, Verizon Communications, Cox Communications and Time Warner, all of which let any message from Goodmail through their firewalls. Senders of the e-mail pay Goodmail a fee to use the service, which is free to consumers.

“Spammers have gotten pretty good at spoofing," said Peter Horan, chief executive of Goodmail.. "You can’t tell if it's spam or the real thing. We’ve dramatically raised the bar because this service is way behind the firewall behind the ISP.”

While Horan isn’t saying it's completely un-hackable, Goodmail’s CertifiedEmail hasn’t yet to be hacked. “We send 2 billion messages a month,” said Horan, noting that the Federal Reserve and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are among its customers.

Think the government could have come up with this? Capitalism rocks.