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Permission-based email works great for me. While new correspondents need to respond to a challenge, I can have every response automatically accepted. This minimizes the delay in getting new messages, and insures that the message is being sent by person and not a bot. If it turns out I don't want to receive future mail from an approved new sender, I can black list them, with or without an explanation to them, with about two clicks. ChoiceMail http://www.digiportal.com/

Since "attacking" the spammers themselves is practically impossible, it is of course no surprise that anti-spam legislation failed. The government simply doesn't have the power to enforce it. Personally, I think that the most logical solution is challenge-response filter systems (when a "new" contact emails you, they are asked to verify their identity so that you can decide whether to accept them or not). The inherent flaw of "content filters" is that there will ALWAYS be a way around. There's always another clever way to spell "viagra", as long as the spammers are willing to find it. Someone (usually the software companies) must constantly update the filter to match newer workarounds. Also, with this method, there is always some blocked legitimate mail. Challenge-response does not have these problems. Spammers won't recieve a challenge message, so their spam never reaches the inbox. Legitimate contacts will recieve a challenge, and it takes mere seconds to complete the form. So an occasional "check" (about once every week) is still required to the "quarantine" to make sure no legitimate mail slipped through, but no spam EVER reaches the inbox. If enough people used systems like this, spam would become impossible. I use ChoiceMail

Ran into this same problem at my company... Tested two different things out:

Mailwasher - Not a challenge/response like you asked for, but allows you to send bounces back to spam, and delete them off of the server before you donwload them. Can tie into SpamHaus and such.

ChoiceMail - Challenge response, both single user and enterprise are available. Single user sits on local machine, enterprise ties into Exchange. Can quickly add anyone in your Outlook contact list to the whitelist, and anyone you send an e-mail to can be set to be whitelisted. The challenge message can be customized. Biggest problem with the bounce (at least in my testing) is that the challenge gets rated as spam by my filters. I'm sure if the challenge was tuned up it wouldn't be that big of a problem. And they have a free trial so you can test it for 14 days

Nephilium

Has anyone here checked into the program ChoiceMail One by Digiportal http://www.digiportal.com? This program seems to be a good solution although it doesn't eliminate the spam it places the burden on the sender to prove the mail is legit. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I've been following the spam issue for a while now and been looking at options for controling or blocking spam. I haven't been to pleased with the functionality of black lists, or spam filters simply because you have to get the spam first before you can begin filtering it. I also don't like missing e-mails because someone had the wrong words in the subject line. One program I've looked into though is Choice Mail by digiportal. Have any of you used this program before? I believe it sounds like a good way to keep the spam out of your inbox all together, but having never taken the time to review it myself, I'm still a bit skeptic. Let me know what you think, and what works for you.

I've been following the spam issue for a while now and been looking at options for controling or blocking spam. I haven't been to pleased with the functionality of black lists, or spam filters simply because you have to get the spam first before you can begin filtering it. I also don't like missing e-mails because someone had the wrong words in the subject line. One program I've looked into though is Choice Mail by digiportal. Have any of you used this program before? I believe it sounds like a good way to keep the spam out of your inbox all together, but having never taken the time to review it myself, I'm still a bit skeptic. Let me know what you think, and what works for you.

Recent articles haven't mentions Digiportal or Mail Frontier, so it is possible that they have come to an agreement with Mailblocks.

Full article (dated 4/05/03) from the San Jose Mercury News.

I am currently using a permission based solution to block spam, called Choicemail. It works great since I know that there are no filters trying to guess what is spam and what is not. People on my white list get in, people who aren't get sent a message asking them to identify themselves.

The only drawback is that some people may possibly feel slighted that they are forced to go through such a process. But so far no one has complained. In fact, most people seem to be intrigued by the concept. If this type of spam blocking catches on, people will begin to expect it. Sort of like having to knock on someone's door before entering their house. It is a custom so pervasive, we feel strange just walking into someone's home, even a friends, without first knocking.

Sorry for the length of this post, and now to the question: How do you feel about this type of spam blocking?

I am curious to know how many people on Slashdot have tried the whitelist approach. (Perhaps it could be a poll?) I have started to use it in the form of the Digiportal product, ChoicEmail. Like the Slate article indicates, it works using a whitelist, and people who contact me who are not on the whitelist are automatically sent a return email asking them to identify themselves. Since using it, I get zero spam.

At first I needed to watch carefully the log files to catch people whom I wanted to communicate with, but had inadvertantly not made it into my initial whitelist, but gradually, it took less maintenance, especially since it automatically adds outgoing emails to my whitelist.

The only real problem with it, is that occasionally, a client, business contact, or a friend will email me and will be surprised by the automatic response. But, I have tried to word the automated response to be as friendly as possible. Even so, some have joked, "Don't you want to hear from me?" However, being intelligent people, they always understand why I have implemented the system, and I can tell most are inspired to think about installing it themselves, as the problem with spam is so universal. So, that is the only real drawback - the potentially lost client or missed communication because the sender somehow feels offended by having to go through the hassle of asking you permission to send you email.

But, this is a cultural barrier, not a technological one. It is possible that this approach would become the standard. If it did, people would never feel offended that they were required to ask permission, since we would all be doing it, and this one slight drawback would be eliminated. I don't know what the future holds, but it is possible. And the interesting thing about it is - if this did become a universal standard method for processing email, there really would be no spam.

I agree - I think things have gotten so bad, that it might not be practical to use algorithms to detect spam. I am using a permission-based system like the Si20. It is called ChoiceMail and it is put out by DigiPortal. If a spammer wants to send you email, they must first ask your permission. If it is a friend, you just give them the OK, and they are forever on your whitelist. I have been using this for about a month, and I too, get ZERO spam.

You make a few good points but some of this sounds a bit paranoid.

> So of course Microsoft would like things to quiet down right
> now. It's because they've already set the traps that they hope will
> capture Linux and the Internet.

So far, so good.

> These traps include:
>
> - .Net

.NET is good technology. Look, if someone else had invented it, let's say Sun
or IBM, would people be so upset about it? It's going to make web services
easier to implement. Let J2EE have a little competition and we'll all benefit.

> - Palladium

The only credible benefit of Palladium to the consumer is spam blocking.
Digital rights management is usually consumer-hostile and tends to be defeated.
This one has little chance of success; too big brother-ish. Keep your
congress-peops informed of your opinions. Meanwhile, there's a couple of
products out that already do spam blocking in a similar way
(ChoiceMail, Mail Washer), and more are coming.

> - Windows Media protocols over the Internet

WMP is a pretty good format. Let them pour money into improving this important
technology, and we'll all benefit. Anyway, with crossover I can now run
Windows Media in Linux, which is one less reason to run Windows--how does that
help Microsoft? Remember, the media player is a free download.

> - Palladium support for Apache

As above.

> - MS Office lock-in on Linux (Crossover)

As above--it's a lock-in, yes, but it's an unlocking of the operating system.
You don't need Windows to do "real" Office. However, this is almost a red
herring because Star/Open Office, Abi Word, etc. have gotten so good. Anyway,
the research to improve Crossover/Wine has a great side effect; it makes more
Win32 binaries run properly in Linux.

> - ActiveX lock-in on Linux (Crossover)

Hmm. For online banking it's handy but best is to scream at the bank, as a
customer, and demand platform independent banking or you'll move your accounts
elsewhere. Money talks. However, as above, it's a liberation of the OS.

> - .Net support (lock-in) in Qt
> - ActiveX support (lock-in) in Konqueror
> - Windows Media lock-in on Linux (mplayer)

Understand your point but this stuff is redundant.

> - Hardware partnership with AMD (kept API details secret, making Linux unstable)
> - Hardware partnership with NVidia (closed source driver tied into Linux kernel)
> - Hardware lock-in through NVidia (their new graphics language compiler)

Don't know anything about these. Tying a BIOS chipset to a particular OS
sounds dangerous and probably unworkable anyway. If it's that specific and
that secret, it'll certainly break something out there. Dongles failed a long
time ago and any attempt to revive them is a waste of time.

> - Attempted government-mandated IP-security-hardware lock-in

Palladium, in other words.

I'm more optimistic than you, though I agree with your concerns. Anyway my
strategy is to keep pushing for Linux wherever I work and certainly in my home
office. But, if someone builds a better widget well, you know it's still a market system; let the best product win.

Terry

Bob Mossberg reviewed ChoiceMail from DigiPortal in a recent column, and said his spam dropped to zero as a result of using the product. It's a permissions-based e-mail software package. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.

Bob Mossberg reviewed ChoiceMail from DigiPortal in a recent column, and said his spam dropped to zero as a result of using the product. It's a permissions-based e-mail software package. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.

Walt Mossberg reviewed a product this week in the WSJ called ChoiceMail from Digiportal.

From the article: "Here's how the program works. ChoiceMail examines every e-mail that comes in before it shows up in the inbox of your e-mail program. If the sender is on an approved list, easily created when you install the program, the e-mail immediately passes through. If the sender is on a rejected list, the e-mail is blocked and deleted.

If the sender is on neither list, ChoiceMail automatically sends an e-mail explaining that you are using a "permission-based" system. The e-mail asks the sender to go to a Web page and fill out a permission form. The request is then sent to you for approval. If you accept it, the e-mail is delivered to you. If not, the e-mail is killed."

The program can import your Eudora or OE address book and add the contents to the non-blocked list. Doesn't work with Mac or *nix, so I've no idea whether it's good or bad. The concept is interesting though...