Tomorrow's World

A new generation of filters is increasingly available :-

  • Some are software that is installed on the server and is totally under the control of the IT department or the ISP. This may work for some comapnies and organisations, but as someone who gets lots of curious e-mails asking about my products, often with even more curious attachments, it would not work for me.

  • There are other companies that offer secure e-mail systems. Here the disadvantage is that instead of your friendly e-mail address, you may have to use something determined by the secure e-mail company.

  • Recently a number of e-mail challenge systems have become available. These allow you to set a whitelist of known friends and anything else is returned to the sender asking them to answer a simple test. As spammers do it automatically, they can't answer successfully.

The third group appear to be the most promising, as they do not impose any restrictions on what is received, only that the e-mail address is deemed to be friendly.

When they are coupled with a desktop filter such as POPFile, they can give a very safe system. The e-mail challenge removes those that are unfriendly, which is most of the spam and the little bit that gets through is buried by the desktop filter.

I have to admit that I don't like mail server solutions, as there is always the chance that an important e-mail will not get through. Suppose you send an important e-mail just as you are leaving the office and it is challenged, then it won't be delivered until you check your messages on the next day and satisfy the challenge.

On the other hand, take the problem that I've had with my wife's, Celia's stud, Freedom Farm. It has a web site at www.freedomfarm.com, which generates an enormous amount of spam. Some bright spark has generated about 10,000 email addresses based on freedomfarm.com, so that he can say he's sent thousands of e-mails for his clients. Isn't a crook defauding his clients?

The point about this spam is that with the exception of the three e-mail addresses that we use for the stud, the rest is complete rubbish and is dumped immediately.

I have now employed a system called SpamStomp, which challenges all of the e-mails received except for the important three e-mail addresses. This is very good, because if someone makes a silly mistake in an e-mail address, then they at least get the chance to send the e-mail by answering the challenge.

But all the spam has stopped, as they don't answer challenges.

Send an E-Mail to a Challenged Address!

SpamStomp seems a very simple way to make sure, you don't get the spam you don't want.

Try it! It will only cost you a few pounds a month.