Sarasota PC Monitor
ChoiceMail: 'Where have you been'?
A Software Review
by VinnyLaBash
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.Guilty until proven innocent! That's the working philosophy behind DigiPortal's ingenious and revolutionary anti spam product, ChoiceMail.
Spam is a killer app in reverse. If not brought under control soon, it could conceivably kill the usefulness of the internet. Presently, spam takes up almost 25% of all internet mail sent over the web, and this percentage is growing at a frightening pace. E-mail is the most valuable communications tool that most of us have and, we are being forced to devote a growing percentage of our time dealing with largely unwanted, unsolicited, offensive and in some cases, downright dangerous material in our electronic in-boxes.
All previous attempts at blocking spam have had only temporary success because the spammers are quite skilled at creating misleading text and phony e-mail return addresses. Some of these guys go so far as to forge legitimate e-mail addresses, thereby implicating innocent people as spammers. Blocking e-mail selectively has not worked because schemes that depend on identifying spammers by their behavior are too easily defeated by merely modifying that behavior.
The simple genius of ChoiceMail is that it assumes ALL e-mail is spam unless YOU decide that it isn't.
When you install the program, you create an e-mail approved list. E-mail appears in your in-box only if the sender is on your approved list. Otherwise ChoiceMail replies with an e-mail explaining that you are using a permission-based e-mail approval system. The sender is directed to a Web site to fill out a permission slip which is then sent to you for approval. One of the people running a variation of the Nigerian Scam actually had the gall to send me a permission slip. I rejected it with no explanation. The only way this e-mail can get delivered is if YOU give permission for it to materialize in your in-box. If YOU deny permission, the e-mail is blocked, deleted, and the sender is place on a rejection list. You will never again see e-mail from that sender.
Due to the way spammers work, most of the time you will not see any permission slips for you to approve. The vast majority of spammers use robot mailers, so they never receive messages from ChoiceMail.
When you start using ChoiceMail, check the unknown senders list for a few days to see if you forgot to add anyone to your approved list. Purchases from online merchants, subscriptions to online newsletters, replies from tech support sites, and the inevitable e-mail correspondent you simply forgot to validate are the most likely candidates for these inadvertent exclusions from your approved list. If someone on your approved list becomes obnoxious, simply remove them from your e-mail address list and you will never hear from them again.
Banishment has never been so simple.
With all this goodness to report, it's inevitable there are a few imperfections in the picture, but only a few, and they are relatively minor. ChoiceMail doesn't yet work with AOL or web based e-mail systems like Yahoo or Hotmail. DigiPortal says that this is temporary and will be addressed in a future release.
If you work with Outlook or Netscape, you will have to import your address book manually. By the time you read this, DigiPortal may have made these flaws a thing of the past.
These are very minor quibbles in a product that works as well as this one. The only gripe I have is DigiPortal, what took you so long?
DigiPortal Software, Single User License $39.95, http://www.digiportal.com/
Copyright 2002. This article is from the November 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,300+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.