Alan’s Money Blog

Don’t you hate spam? I do! I get so much damn spam that I sometimes wonder how I even manage to respond to legitimate e-mails. I got sick and tired of it so I decided to do something about it. No, the answer is not better filtering software. Nearly all of the software out there is not good enough and no matter how clever your filters are spammers will eventually find a way through them. It’s a never ending cat and mouse game. There are better solutions to the spam problem so I though that I’d bring to your attention three solutions that I believe to be highly effective.

There is a radical difference between the first and the last two spam prevention services in this trio. The first one is an open e-mail system whereby anyone can e-mail you if they verify themselves (via a turing code), while the other two use a closed e-mail loop system whereby nobody on the outside can contact you unless YOU have specifically added that person to your address book.

Let’s look at these three ways of dealing with spam:

1) Spamarrest

Spamarrest prevents spam by putting a “human verification” barrier between you and the potential sender. This means that whoever is trying to send you an e-mail for the first time is going to have to go through a verification process to ensure that he/she is indeed a human sender. When the sender completes this verification process he/she is added to your safe list and from here on you will be able to receive e-mails from this person without any further complications. Most spammers use either spam robots or some other form of automated mailing software so it is highly unlikely that a spammer would go through the verification process. Imagine if he comes across say a few hundred people using spamarrest – it would be quite a pain for the spammer. In other words, spamarrest’s challenge/response technology blocks 100% of automated spam.

2) Woomail

Woomail is a new startup company that I came across a few months back. I’ve been using their services with great success. Woomail works on the second principle I’ve discussed above (closed mail loop). Instead of having an email address (such as johndoe@somedomain.com) you will have a unique Woomail address (such as woomail.com/johndoe). Because Woomail is not formatted like traditional email, your unique Woomail address is useless to internet mass marketer. That’s the first level of protection. The most important protective measure is that people that wish to communicate with you will have to sign-up for a Woomail account. At least they will have to do so if they want to communicate on a regular basis.

I must add that Woomail is quite an excellent solution for online groups such as MLM businesses or investment clubs who have to maintain close and secure communications amongst their members. Woomail let’s you create “projects” or “collaborations” which are the equivalent of traditional mailing lists. Like I said Woomail is a new startup so they may experience typical “growing pains,” so bear with them and I’m sure they’ll resolve all issues as they come up. If you’re an early adopter you hurry up and sing-up you can probably get some really good and easy to remember Woomail addresses.

3) NewNetMail

NewNetMail works on the same principle as Woomail. NewNetMail describes their system as “a private system where subscribers may correspond only with other subscribers to whom they have exchanged permission to send mail to each other.” I threw this one in as it appears to be fairly popular. I do not have much experience with it as I do not own a newnetmail account as I prefer Woomail instead. From a few screenshots I’ve found on the net it appears that their interface is farily easily to use and straightforward. Unlike Woomail, NewNetMail is a paid service. They do have a free subscribers options but it is limited in some ways. Another thing that I found quite irksome is that you have to have an invitation to join. If nobody referred you though you can e-mail the NewNetMail staff and they’ll send you a link – a bit of a bother, but I guess it’s not so bad.

For all you entrepreneurs, NewNetMail has a fairly lucrative affiliate program. I won’t go into the detail over here as it would be out of the scope of this article, so if you’re interested in making money with NewNetMail just visit their website for more details.

That’s all for now folks. I hope you found this article useful.

Cheers,

Alan

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