Slashdot Mirror
Building A Better Inbox (Updated)
vudujava writes "c|net is reporting that a new free (Update: not free, actually, read more for details.), web based email service is opening it's doors today. They promise to deliver "100% spam free" email to their users by using a challenge-response system to all incoming, first-time mail. Catch the entire story here. Although the idea isn't new, it shows that we are notching up the "war on spam"."
Alert reader George Hotelling points out this post on Politech which may give you pause when it comes to the new mail service's Terms of Service.
And kraksmoka writes "As reported on this article on MSNBC : 'Hotmail subscribers are now limited to sending only 100 messages a day "in an effort to prevent spammers from using Hotmail to spread spam," said Lisa Gurry, MSN lead product manager.'"
dlanod writes "In your snippet on the main page you report mailblocks.com as "a new free, web based email service". Looking at Mailblocks' site, it actually costs $9.95/year for the standard service, or $24.95/year for the expanded service with no free option listed (https://app1.mailblocks.com/register.htm)."
...rather than government legislation. It doesn't matter how much one country's government may ban spam, if it still comes from outside it's still going to come in time and time again.
This setup may not be perfect, but to me it's a step in the right direction. Working towards a system that doesn't allow spammers to exist is wholly more admirable.
--
Curiously, why were open relays ever in existence? And once spam started, why were open relays kept around? Is there a use for them? Why not have all mail servers require authentication for outgoing mail, much like POP retrieval. That would have to stop a great deal of spam
Like a very annoying email service. Doesnt this kill speed advantages of email? I would hate to send an email out, and have to go through more red tape so the recipeint can receive their email. The sender would be doing all the work to help solve the recipients spam problem.
What about the mass emails I like to receive, such as newsletters?
100% Insightful
So, they simply create more Hotmail accounts and send out more spam.
Besides, I've never actually had spam *from* Hotmail - it's usually going *to* my Hotmail account or spam coming with forget Hotmail headers.
I seriously doubt this is going to do very much to curb spam.
There have been procmail-based autoresponders that essentially do this for ages. You maintain a whitelist, people who are not on it need to reply to an email and then get added to your whitelist.
Logic is not was it used to be. Now you prevent war starting it, so this is not so bad.
Remember, spam targetted for a specific audience is not all that bad.
I used to work for a bulk email service. We pride(d) ourselves on the fact that we supplied game offers to gamers. If you were a hardcore gamer, you didn't mind the mail. If you didn't care about games, you didn't get our emails.
Is that such a bad thing?
Sure, a large sum of spam isn't targetted for a specific audience, just as many people as possible. That should be blocked. Targetted mail, however, should not.
Yeah, I'm a Republican AND a geek. It is possible.
I've wondered about that too. You could always manually add the person to your whitelist before you send the initial message.
What I'm wondering about is how you would buy something online where you can't really predict the address that shipping-confirmations will come from. In that case one wouldn't know what to add to the whitelist, and the odds of a human being on the other end are small...so your TMDA message would probably go ignored.
Is there a good FAQ somewhere that addresses questions like these?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
you invented this idea the way al gore invented the internet. :(
as I posted earlier, mapson predates any commercial implementation I have seen. I downloaded version 1.0 to doublecheck -- unless yours was written before 1997, or you employ Peter Simons, I'm afraid your claim to being the first doesn't hold water.
mailblock at least doesn't claim originality, just that they do it better. which may be true; they have a pretty slick "mail siphon" feature going.
Domains in today's batch of spam:
yahoo.com (3)
hotmail.com (2)
earthlink.net (1)
popstar.com (1)
hot-shot.com (1)
ayna.com (1)
voile.net (1)
bigfoot.com (1)
mindless.com (1)
amexmail.com (1)
forum.dk (1)
servadmin.com (1)
Some of those are faked, of course, but it would seem that a lot of it comes from free providers.
(And thanks to SpamAssassin, none of that made it to my inbox)
war ( P ) Pronunciation Key (wôr)
n.
1.
1. A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.
2. The period of such conflict.
3. The techniques and procedures of war; military science.
2.
1. A condition of active antagonism or contention: a war of words; a price war.
2. A concerted effort or campaign to combat or put an end to something considered injurious: the war against acid rain.
Perhaps it isn't so bad for those who use 'Other browsers' less than 100% of the time.
I'm not asking web developers to develop for Mozilla, or Opera or Internet Explorer... I'm asking them to develop based on standards! 95% of the web works on 'other browsers', why can't the other 5% ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If they want to do something to cut down on spam, why not just limit the number of messages that a server can send to hotmail addresses? Meaning, if I want to send out spam and my list includes 100,000 hotmail adresses, hotmail's servers will reject every message I send to a them after the 100th. That just wiped out 99.9% of spam that hotmail users would receive.
Yes, it would take some work and the processing cost per message would be higher, but if it works, and cuts down on traffic by a higher percentage than the increased cost associated with the system, it would still be an amazing improvement.
I've always wondered why MS couldn't look at all incoming messages and spot spam based on vast numbers of similar messages.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
My resume is only posted as HTML. The included email link specifies a Subject that my filters look for. That's good enough for people contacting me via my on-line resume. When I'm actually in the job market, I have a filter that allows subject lines related to jobs. That allows in people who have my email address in a database, or who copy/paste it into a message instead of using the link.
It is unlikely that a spammer will generate a valid sender. Hoping to generate a valid fake address to deceive my challenge system is too much time/effort for most spammers. In the first place, they would have to include contact info in the Subject of the message. Not likely.
There is a way to fix this, and it's not complicated, but it will require agreement among mail client developers.