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Fighting back the spam attack
Last updated June 1, 2004
by Steve Kastner
 With
well over 75% of my e-mail having degraded to absolute spam, in early July, 2003 I started researching spam filtering
applications. On July 9, 2003 I installed a demo-copy of ChoiceMail One. A
few days later I gladly paid the $39.95 for a ChoiceMail registered user license ... because
it works! As of today it has filtered out 111,603
spam messages and I can only say, "Thanks DigiPortal development
team, for saving me hours of wasted time wading through a sea of spam!"
| There are several types of spam filtration systems out there. |
The real one... |
Some firms try to maintain active databases of spamers and their content. They attempt to block spam by screening
out specific senders and content. But, since most spam is sent
from anonymous sources that use a send-and-vanish technique to mask the source
it is useless to block the senders address. Blocking by keywords or phrases quickly turns into a cat and mouse
game as spammers invent new words like V*I*A*G*R*A. The best methods of blocking spam use some form of sender verification.
These "whitelist"
spam filters generally work by allowing you to grant permission
to senders before they can send you email. No need to rely on imperfect filtering systems that allow some junk
and worse, block real messages.
ChoiceMail One forces an unknown sender to go through a manual web-based registration process where they must explain
briefly why they want to contact you. Until a sender registers with you, their email messages are held in a folder
that you can look through. This process by itself is sufficient to block almost all junk e-mail immediately.
ChoiceMail is easy to set up and allows you to immediately import and
approve everyone in your address book. You can also unblock senders individually by adding specific addresses or
whole domains to your approved list. If you spot a worthy sender trapped in the bin of blocked messages you can
immediately unblock them there as well.
Choicemail works with ALL standard POP3 clients (Outlook Express, Eudora, Outlook, PINE,
Netscape Messenger, etc). ChoiceMail can configure Outlook Express
(versions 5 and later), Eudora (versions 4 and later) and Outlook 98 and later, automatically. It also works to
filter web-based email accounts with AOL, MSN, Hotmail and Yahoo. If you are using other email applications, such
as Netscape, Mozilla, or the Bat, you will have to configure ChoiceMail and your other email application manually.
Note:
ChoiceMail does not support the proprietary AOL or MSN email environments. Instead, ChoiceMail retrieves the mail
from these systems and AOL/MSN users then use a standard email application such as Outlook Express to read mail.
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