Whitemail

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Whitemail, coined as an opposite to blackmail, has several meanings explained below.

Economics

In economics, Whitemail is an anti-takeover arrangement in which the target company will sell significantly discounted stock to a friendly third party. In return, the target company helps thwart takeover attempts, by

1. raising the acquisition price of the raider,
2. diluting the hostile bidder’s number of shares, and
3. increasing the aggregate stock holdings of the company.

Social culture

Whitemail can also be considered as legally compensating someone for doing their job in a manner benefiting the payor. For example, if a person gives a maître de a $20 bill in order to secure a table more quickly than other patrons who had arrived earlier, this could be considered whitemail. It is merely a compensatory incentive for someone to do their job quicker, better, or in a manner more advantageous to the payer. It can be considered a bribe, depending on the person being offered the incentive and the action the incentive is intended to influence.

Fiction

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld universe, whitemail is an anti-crime. Whitemail is the threat of revealing a person's good deeds for purposes of ruining the person's reputation (e.g. as a gangster).

E-mail

On the internet, Whitemail was an anonymous mailer hosted on biomatic.org. It would allow any visitor to send e-mail messages to any address at no cost and with no registration required, simply using the site's interface. Whitemail even allowed its users to provide any e-mail address (their own, somebody else's or one that does not exist) that would then appear to the recipient as the message's origin. The Whitemail service was removed from the site at version 3 in 2004.

References

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• "Whitemail". http://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/whitemail.asp. Retrieved 2006-12-07.