Email sender verification
I used to check in regularly at a blog called Mindless Blather until one day it just disappeared. The author, Sue, used the byline of "kyte" and I rediscovered her while looking at Word Press templates.
The new site is called Hamarana. I don’t know why it’s called that, but Sue has a great flair for tasteful design.
While browsing there I was interested to read about Bluebottle. This is a free email sender verification service, which basically eliminates spam by asking the sender to confirm that their address is real.
I signed up and put Bluebottle through its paces. It works well and comes with 250MB mail storage and no ads.
It claims to cover up to three POP3 mail accounts also, but this feature is currently not working. I tried forwarding one of my accounts to Bluebottle, but I couldn’t get that to work either.
I did a web search to see who else is operating in this field and came across Spam Arrest. It provides the same service, but costs US$34.95 per year. I found it works faster than Bluebottle and the POP3 feature is enabled.
I normally get three or four spam emails per hour. Even screening them through Mailwasher is annoying. Since I started using Spam Arrest about four hours ago I’ve had nothing.
If a spam mailer does bother to validate and sneaks through, you can block them completely through a web-based control centre.
Both Bluebottle and Spam Arrest are well worth a look.
These articles might be of interest:
Michael, I’m sorry. Mindlessblather had to go because I was skating far too close to the edge with some of the things I was saying, and putting my employment in jeopardy. (No, I was not ordered to take the site down, it just seemed prudent at the time)> Its safer to stick to innocuous topics. I’ve had Hamarana for a very long time, about 6 years now I guess… bloggifying it seemed a natural progression.
Interested to see spam arrest. There is also an Australian site very similar and I can’t remember the name of it. When I do, I’ll post at Hamarana and drop you a note.
http://www.spamtrap.com.au/
better late than never