|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 Category :: Spam |
Author :: Lee Traupel  |
| |
| Article Title :: New Spam Prevention Product that Works! |
| |
|
Businesses and consumers are drowning in a never-ending deluge
of Spam (junk mail) – according to reports just released by
Quris, Inc. Spam has increased 450% from June of 2001 to now.
Furthermore, 70% of respondents indicated they are receiving so
much e-mail in the form of Spam that it’s negating their
acceptance and responsiveness to legitimate opt-in e-mail
messages (permission based). The average business user is forced
to spend 20-30 minutes a day wading through Spam clogged e-mail
in-boxes trying to separate legitimate e-mail from the junk in
order to delete the latter.
Many companies have tried to offer Spam solutions that are based
primarily on filtering technology. But, most of these products
and services have not worked well in practice – the ingenious
spammers have learned work arounds by constantly changing their
fake e-mail addresses and text to avoid the blocking filters.
It’s been a war of attrition to date and the spammers have been
wining so far!
I am pleased to report that one company has developed an elegant
but simple solution that has blocked 100% of the Spam that was
sent to me during a test period of five days. The company is
DigiPortal Software, Inc. www.digiportal.com and their Spam
killer application is called ChoiceMail. It works extremely
well, is easy to setup and only costs $29.95 (introductory
price) and they even offer a fourteen-day trial period for no
charge to test drive the product. And, the solution runs on your
desktop and does not necessitate your working with a third party
server and doesn’t require any service charges. Most
importantly, it puts the burden of proof on the Spammers,
forcing them to have your permission to contact you.
Here is how DigiPortal’s clever solution and software work: You
download or purchase the software and install it on your PC
(sorry PC version only right now) and setup your approval list
by exporting your address book. From that point forward
ChoiceMail automatically assumes all inbound e-mail is Spam and
it blocks any e-mail that is not on an approved list that you
have created.
If the e-mail sender is on your approved list it makes it
through to your inbox; if not, then ChoiceMail blocks the mail
if the address and adds it to a rejection list and sends the
sender a notification that your on a “permission network” and
that he/she has to clickthrough to a web site and send you a
message by filling out a form that automatically forwards the
person’s message to you, so you can elect to receive or not.
DigiPortal is effectively acting as a trusted middleman in a
process that reminds me of PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”) the
defacto industry standard e-mail security application that
incorporates a similar process via a key held by a trusted third
party. Your ostensibly guaranteed never to receive any Spam
based e-mail as spammers will never receive your e-mail, let
alone reply to it – most use automated systems that have no
human intervention in the process. It’s relatively painless for
you to manage new contacts - if your receiving in-bound e-mails
from a new a person (contact) that you have no existing
relationship with it’s easy to accept his/her request to reach
you and the software also automatically updates your permission
list.
ChoiceMail is an elegant solution that works well, is easy to
use and solves a problem very cost effectively. There are a few
hiccups with the software – but, these are minor when you
consider the significant benefits of the product and assuming
the company will broaden its support for other applications in
the near term. At present DigiPortal only works with standard
ISPs such as Earthlink, ATT, etc. and with specific desktop
clients including Outlook Express and Eudora – no web-based
e-mail services (HotMail or Yahoo mail) work with the software
yet and there is no support for AOL at present. My biggest
complaint is that they don’t support a standard Outlook e-mail -
you have to manually import your contact list from Outlook,
which can be painstaking depending on the number of recipients
in your address book. And, their initial focus is on the small
business user or consumer, as they offer no support at present
for the corporate enterprise.
|
| |
 |
More Spam Articles  |
| | |
|
Article Categories
