Slashdot Mirror

I didn't see mention of whitelist email services like Bluebottle where users choose who they want to accept email from rather than swinging the gates open and filtering out the junk.

Why not try "bluebottle" http://mail.bluebottle.com./ It offers free POP mail with limited storage. Yes I know Gmail also can be accessed through the POP interface but the amount of junk mail is far more limited in my bluebottle account.

I have to say that Bluebottle is the best free email service ever. It has better spam control than AOL. Only allowed senders can send you mail; anything by anyone else resides in the pending box.

Anyway this doesn't make much sense(TFA), then again, who uses AOL?

TMDA is an open source software application designed to significantly reduce the amount of spam (Internet junk-mail) you receive. TMDA strives to be more effective, yet less time-consuming than traditional spam filters. TMDA can also be used as a general purpose local mail delivery agent to filter, sort, deliver and dispose of incoming mail.

The technical countermeasures used by TMDA to thwart spam include:

* whitelists: accept mail from known, trusted senders.

* blacklists: refuse mail from undesired senders.

* challenge/response: allows unknown senders which aren't on the whitelist or blacklist the chance to confirm that their message is legitimate (non-spam).

* tagged addresses: special-purpose e-mail addresses such as time-dependent addresses, or addresses which only accept certain kinds of communication. These increase the transparency of TMDA for unknown senders by allowing them to safely circumvent the challenge/response system.

"Important Notice
Melbourne, Australia - 1 October 2003

Bluebottle has found itself under constant attack from numerous sources over the past couple of months making it almost impossible to deliver spam free email to your account in a consistent and timely manner. We have therefore decided to cease offering protection for external accounts, and will be removing the verification protection from Bluebottle accounts.

This has not been an easy decision to make but has been necessary in light of the delays currently being experienced in email delivery. Whilst work is still being performed to address these issues, as it currently stands, Bluebottle is unable to ensure the timely delivery of mail for Bluebottle accounts. You are certainly welcome to continue using your Bluebottle account, although no verification protection will be applied to inbound mail.

We have done everything in our power to address these attacks although it has had little effect. We are obviously very disappointed that we cannot continue to provide you our service at this time.

Bluebottle's email verification system is best provided in a distributed manner making it considerably more difficult for these attacks to be effective. We will therefore be making our software available to any service provider or enterprise to protect their end users from unwanted email, and by doing so make it a more secure solution given that it is provided in distributed environment.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience our decision will cause.

For further information please contact;
Robert Pickup
Bluebottle Systems Pty Ltd
61 407 528 349

"Important Notice
Melbourne, Australia - 1 October 2003

Bluebottle has found itself under constant attack from numerous sources over the past couple of months making it almost impossible to deliver spam free email to your account in a consistent and timely manner. We have therefore decided to cease offering protection for external accounts, and will be removing the verification protection from Bluebottle accounts.

This has not been an easy decision to make but has been necessary in light of the delays currently being experienced in email delivery. Whilst work is still being performed to address these issues, as it currently stands, Bluebottle is unable to ensure the timely delivery of mail for Bluebottle accounts. You are certainly welcome to continue using your Bluebottle account, although no verification protection will be applied to inbound mail.

We have done everything in our power to address these attacks although it has had little effect. We are obviously very disappointed that we cannot continue to provide you our service at this time.

Bluebottle's email verification system is best provided in a distributed manner making it considerably more difficult for these attacks to be effective. We will therefore be making our software available to any service provider or enterprise to protect their end users from unwanted email, and by doing so make it a more secure solution given that it is provided in distributed environment.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience our decision will cause.

For further information please contact;
Robert Pickup
Bluebottle Systems Pty Ltd
61 407 528 349

The technical countermeasures used by TMDA to thwart spam include:

• whitelists: accept mail from known, trusted senders.
• blacklists: refuse mail from undesired senders.
• challenge/response: allows unknown senders which aren't on the whitelist or blacklist the chance to confirm that their message is legitimate (non-spam).
• tagged addresses: special-purpose e-mail addresses such as time-dependent addresses, or addresses which only accept certain kinds of communication. These increase the transparency of TMDA for unknown senders by allowing them to safely circumvent the challenge/response system.

This combination was chosen based on the following assumptions about the current state of spam on the Internet:

1. You cannot keep your email address secret from spammers.

2. Content-based filters can't distinguish spam from legitimate mail with sufficient accuracy.

3. To maintain economies of scale, bulk-mailing is generally:
* An impersonal process where the recipient is not distinguished.
* A one-way communication channel (from spammer to victim).

4. spam will not cease until it becomes prohibitively expensive for spammers to operate.

White lists. On the net every encounter (email/im) is a potentially hostile encounter. I was using Bluebottle.com (R.I.P.) for a few months (6) and it was the bomb.

I added whoever I wanted to my list or they authenticated themselves. At least if a spam did get through (not in my experience) it would have to have a valid return address and thats a step in the right direction.

Bluebottle has found itself under constant attack from numerous sources over the past couple of months making it almost impossible to deliver spam free email to your account in a consistent and timely manner. We have therefore decided to cease offering protection for external accounts, and will be removing the verification protection from Bluebottle accounts.

This has not been an easy decision to make but has been necessary in light of the delays currently being experienced in email delivery. Whilst work is still being performed to address these issues, as it currently stands, Bluebottle is unable to ensure the timely delivery of mail for Bluebottle accounts. You are certainly welcome to continue using your Bluebottle account, although no verification protection will be applied to inbound mail.

We have done everything in our power to address these attacks although it has had little effect. We are obviously very disappointed that we cannot continue to provide you our service at this time.

Bluebottle's email verification system is best provided in a distributed manner making it considerably more difficult for these attacks to be effective. We will therefore be making our software freely available to any service provider or enterprise to protect their end users from unwanted email, and by doing so make it a more secure solution given that it is provided in distributed environment.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience our decision will cause.

Instead of use bluebottle.com? They have free 10 meg accounts without MS bs or advertising and use a TMDA like system for anti-spam verification. I'll never understand why technical people would use a hotmail account (bluebottle *will* also check your hotmail account for you).

Unless its something like 100% accurate and doesn't leave a spam folder I still have to cull through to check for mislabeled emails.

Bayesian filtering gets a lot of attention and I'm guessing mainly because its such a technical solution, but really its just another hack.

So far I've had the best luck with an old fashioned challenge-response type system (ala bluebottle.com) and while its not as sexy sounding as Bayesian filtering, its saving me the sheer frustration of having to weed through other peoples crap advertisements or worrying about dropped emails (except of course automated emails, which I have to use a more spam friendly account for).

So far the best thing I've seen is the challenge response systems like bluebottle (free but very slow) or spamarrest (never used it, costs $34.95 per year).

I've been using bluebottle for over a month now and its so much nicer knowing new emails are really just that. Unfortunately its slow enough (at least the web interface, pop is faster) that I won't start recommending it to family and non-techy friends.

To plug bluebottle.com. Their 'smart' spam filtering system includes a challenge-response type system to verify the legitimacy of the account and an allowed list. I've been using it for about 2 weeks and like it so far (I get over a hundred pieces of crap a day at my old account).

Couple of nits are it is slow as hell to log into (they are in Australia and supposedly upgrading their system to fix this) and it uses Horde as the actual email interface (I'm a much bigger fan of SquirrelMail and always thought Horde needed a serious facelift).

Of course the upside is I haven't had a single piece of spam and I really like logging in and knowing that if I have new mail its from people I want to hear from.

Here's their marketing spiel:

Bluebottle stops spam.
Bluebottle's open-source technology is 100% effective in blocking unwanted email. It is the only system that can effectively protect a user from spam while ensuring all legitimate email is received.

Bluebottle is easy to use. When Bluebottle receives an email from an address or domain not on your âAllowed' list, a verification request is sent asking the sender to verify themselves in one of two ways. The required response to these verification requests automatically places the sender's address on your âAllowed' list, and the email is delivered to you without delay.

Once the sender's address is on this list, they can email you as they would normally. The advantage is that you ONLY receive email from allowed senders.

Effective.
To avoid identification, spammers commonly use forged or fake addresses. Consequently, the verification request is never seen or responded to, so spammers can't infiltrate your allowed list. That means you'll no longer receive annoying, unwanted email.

Manageable.
Bluebottle is easy to manage. Simply add your known contacts to your âAllowed' list so they can avoid verifying themselves. And even if legitimate senders do need to verify themselves, it's quick and easy to do so.

If you're sending an email, Bluebottle automatically adds the recipient's address to your allowed list to avoid a request being sent when they reply.

Protective.
Bluebottle applies the verification process to your existing email, including Hotmail, by checking your accounts through its servers. Email from known senders is delivered to your account without delay. Unknown email is placed in the pending queue to await verification. You can access your spam-free email through Bluebottle's webmail interface or via pop using any email client.

Bluebottle is a similar service, and it's free. Hope this helps.

How about solutions like bluebottle and spam arrest. They are both ASPs that are essentially dynamic whitelists. If an unknown sender sends you an email, they are sent an autoreply with a challenge. Only real people can solve the challenge, and when they do, they are added to your whitelist. You can still override the whitelist (to explicitly block a spammer who somehow authorized themself), as well as prepopulate it. They also work with mailing lists; and you can go in at anytime and check your unverified email. I use spam arrest, and I love it!