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)."

Comments

Now this is what I prefer to see...

[questamor]

...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

This seems...

[Shant3030]

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?

Re:Question.

[pohl]

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?

you invented this? not.

[jbellis]

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.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

This won't make much difference

[WebMasterJoe]

'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.'

This really isn't going to do anything worthwhile. Unless the spammers are actually logging into Hotmail, typing in the names, and pressing send, this sort of measure is pointless. It seems that the spammers are just throwing together random usernames + "@hotmail.com" and using their own smtp servers (or somebody else's, just not Hotmail's).

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.