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 By Dale Farris,
Secretary
Golden Triangle PC Club
April 2003
Service Overview
Are you tired of spam? Have you had enough junk email pile up your in-box?
Wish you could finally be rid of those obnoxious, unsolicited messages?
As many readers know, the issue of spam, or unsolicited, unwanted email,
has become such a problem that it has led to the creation of a slew of new
utility programs designed to help computer users block unwanted mail from
ever getting to their inbox. What is primarily driving this surging
interest in these specialized applications is the ease of use advertised
by the programs, thus enabling users to block unwanted email but not
requiring them to complete the many times complicated, tedious filtering
rules in their email application.
Going still further in this direction of ease of use for the customer is
the new Mailblocks service that allows customers to set up their email
address at the Mailblocks server, and let the Mailblocks service block
unwanted email messages from ever getting to the user's computer. The program works
with an encryption process that requires senders of email to go the Mailblocks site and correctly enter into a database field the numbers they
see when they get there.
The principle driving Mailblocks is that a person must actively enter
the correct data once their email message has been blocked and bounced
back to them. When you set up your Mailblocks services, folks who send
you email will get a tactful message indicating that in order for you to
receive their message, they will have to go to the Mailblocks site, find the
numbers on the screen, and then correctly type these numbers into the
database field. Once this process has been completed, then their email message will be
allowed to complete its path to your inbox.
See the difference? A real person is required to go to
the site and correctly enter the numbers they see there, if they want their message
to get to you. Also, these numbers are not data bits, but instead
colorfully created in a design that forces a real person to actually look
at and find the numbers, and then enter these numbers in the field.
The purpose of Mailblocks is to prevent automated email messaging
services from sending unwanted email messages to your email inbox.
When these computer program-controlled messages try to get to your site,
but get bounced back by the Mailblocks service because no person was in charge of the message, and
then no real person will correctly enter the numbers found at the Mailblocks site,
then these unwanted message will die on the vine and never get to you.
Isn't that wonderful?
Tools to Block Spam
As any e-mail user can attest, the number of spam messages is increasing,
a troubling sign. This problem has become such an issue that we are now
seeing various attempts in the U.S. Congress to legislate an answer to
this problem. In the meantime, email users are on their own when it comes
to trying to block unwanted email messages.
According to Brightmail, a company that blocks spam for 6 of the nation's
top 10 ISPs, spam now accounts for nearly 40% of all Internet
e-mail traffic. The good news is the number of tools to combat spam is
also growing.
A new breed of antispam software is working on this problem with a
function referred to as whitelisting. This is a genre of software that,
instead of using complex analytics to determine whether a message is spam
in order to block it, instead use the whitelisting approach to help you compile a "whitelist" of people you
wish to receive mail. Other of these services include ChoiceMail, Goodbye
Spam, and Qurb.
The list then becomes the primary means of filtering your incoming mail.
If someone sends you a message and they are on your approved senders list,
the message goes into your in-box. If they are not on your list, the message is placed
in a quarantine folder until you act on it, either by accepting the
message (thereby adding the sender to your whitelist), or deleting it.
The advantage of a whitelist product is that nothing but legitimate
correspondence ever reaches your in-box. The drawback is that you must
regularly visit the quarantine folder and check for important messages
from unexpected sources. As you continue to use the product and add more
addresses to the whitelist, checking the quarantine gets easier. In
Mailblocks, this "quarantine" folder is their Pending folder.
If you like, you can quickly expand your whitelist with the help of
challenge messages, a means of determining whether unsolicited mail is
coming from a real person. Senders who reply to challenge messages are
automatically added to your whitelist, and their original messages are
moved to your in-box.
Other of today's antispam programs, such as Cloudmark SpamNet, iHateSpam,
Matador, or SpamCatcher block spam using complex analytics, as well as
whitelists. With these programs, spam occasionally ends up in your in-box, but a
much higher percentage of legitimate correspondence comes through, and in
theory, you don't have to visit your quarantine folder as often. Keep in
mind though, that these products are far from perfect. They occasionally
block messages they shouldn't, and if you don't regularly visit your
quarantine, you'll certainly miss a small percentage of important mail.
Which is Right For You?
Which antispam tool you choose, either a whitelist product or something
more aggressive, is a matter of personal preference. A whitelist product,
such as Mailblocks, gives you more control and pretty much guarantees that
only mail sent from an individual (not a spammer's server) appears in your
in-box. However, a whitelist program involves some work, both for you as
you construct your approved list, and for those who receive challenge
responses and need to act to get their messages through. You do not have
to put as much work into the filtering tools, but these will also
inevitably let some spam through and block some real messages. The whitelist products, such as Mailblocks, are also set up to make spam
blocking more easy for users, especially when you consider all antispam
approaches are trying to make their programs both useful as well as
easy for AOLers.
Next Generation Web-Based Email Service
Mailblocks is a next-generation, personal web-based email service designed
for consumers to fix three key problems with today's email applications:
(1), the proliferation of spam on the Internet;
(2), the clunky,
counter-intuitive user experience of web-based email; and
(3), a lack of
user-driven features.
Mailblocks Key Attributes
Mailblocks eliminates spam. Architecting Mailblocks’s service
around the patented Challenge/Response technology, Mailblocks has created
an effective blend of automated technology and human involvement to thwart
email
spammers.
Email sent from new people who are not on the user's Address list are
sent a request to authenticate (called a Challenge). Machine-generated
email, unable to respond, will not be downloaded into the user’s inbox,
but will move into the user's Pending folder, and subsequently be deleted
in 2 weeks. New users need respond only once to a Challenge, and they are
recognized from then on. The only email users see is from recognized
correspondents or new contacts who respond to the Challenge email.
Users can import existing address books, and add names of those whose
email they wish to receive.
Mailblocks automatically sorts incoming email into folders based on user
preferences.
Quarantined mail can be viewed by the user and read if desired, but it is
automatically deleted after two weeks.
Mailblocks gives users five aliases, called Trackers, to automatically
manage emails sent from e-commerce vendors, subscription services, and
other places where computer-generated responses are accepted
communication.
Mailblocks feels like an always-on desktop application. Mailblocks gives
users the benefits of using web-based email, accessible from any browser,
but with the responsiveness, speed, and preferences historically found only
in desktop applications.
• Simple and intuitive user interface
• "Always-on" feel, similar to a desktop application
• Drag-and-drop email management capabilities
• Rich text composition options
• Quick response to user commands
• The feel of broadband experience over dial-up
Mailblocks gives users the features they want. Based on extensive customer
research, Mailblocks has designed a service to meet the needs of today’s
email users.
• More storage allowed for emails
• Up to 6 MB attachment allowance per email
• Integration of existing email accounts from YahooMail, Hotmail, and
AOL into Mailblocks’s spam-free Inbox
• IMAP compatibility using Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora
clients
Mailblocks is committed to ensuring that the Internet email industry
reaches its vast potential, but not at the expense of the consumer
experience.
How It Works
Step 1. Ryan sends an email to Deb.
Step 2. Mailblocks checks Ryan's email against Deb's address list.
Step 3. Ryan is not recognized, so a Challenge/Response email to
Ryan is
generated.
Step 4. Ryan responds, but computers cannot.
Step 5. Deb gets Ryan’s email.
That is all there is to it, at least on the user end of things. Of course,
as you may guess, there is a lot of very sophisticated software designing
and coding at work "behind the scenes," making this process work so
smoothly for both the customer and anyone trying to send them a message.
As is always the case with anything that seems so easy to use, any time something seems
so easy or seems to work
so well, this means it is actually very complex. Of
course the customer sees little of this hard work, but believe me it is
there, or this super new service would not work so well or so easily.
Implications for Use
Using Mailblocks, in addition to making it so very easy to control spam,
does present some responsibility for customers. I would suggest you
consider sending messages to your friends and associates indicating that
you have set up a Mailblocks account, and tell them how this will impact their
future email messages to you. All you need do is alert them to remember to
respond to the Mailblocks Challenge/Response, just once, in order for
their messages to continue to smoothly flow to you after you set up your
service.
Of course, for all that unwanted spam, you just let Mailblocks block your
inbox from ever getting these messages again. Since in most cases
spam email messages are automatically generated by computer bot programs,
specifically
designed to send millions of unsolicited email messages to anybody
and everybody, you will be protected from these types of unwanted
messages.
If you have joined various email listserv groups, or other
machine-generated mail, such as computer-related newsletters, that is not
spam, you also might want to
check with the moderators of these automated listservs, so you can
alert them to please respond to the first Mailblocks Challenge/Response,
in order for your listserv messages to get through. You can also work with
the Mailblocks service to allow these messages that are placed in your
Pending folder to come through. Since most all
listserv groups are controlled by automated programs, but moderated by a
person, you at least will have a moderator
to contact to be sure these types of automated messages do continue to
come to you as you wish.
You have 2 options with these types of messages. You can manually add the
sender's domain to your Whitelist, which is set up in Mailblocks, or you can create
a Tracker that will automatically bypass the Challenge/Response system and
funnel this mail into a special folder. Trackers require you to create a
special e-mail address for each newsletter, then change the address on
your newsletter subscription to match it.
Also, Mailblocks has been designed to optimize dial-up access and claims
to be faster at 56K than most Web mail services are via cable or DSL.
Once set up, Mailblocks will stop 100% of the spam headed for your in-box,
and although by its nature this may include blocking a lot of legitimate
mail, you can work with Mailblocks to manage the service to help you decide which of
these automated email messages you wish to allow through.
In other words, setting up Mailblocks means you will need to do a little
tactful alerting with any of your associates or contacts, in order to help
them know what to do to continue their email communicating with you.
Market Potential for Mailblocks
Think there may not be all that much interest in Mailblocks? Well,
consider the vast growth in interest in spam busters, and the vast number
of people who now daily send and receive hundreds of email messages across the
world.
The Internet’s most popular application, email, continues to proliferate,
along with particularly troublesome problems for consumers. When Ray
Tomlinison of BBN Technologies created the first email 30 years ago as a
demonstration of the Internet’s predecessor, ARPAnet, he could not have
imagined that more than 26.1 billion email messages would be sent
worldwide in 2005. Email continues to grow at a phenomenal rate and
fosters new users enamored with and dependent on continuous connectivity
with friends, family and their workplace.
A Forrester Research report cites email as the number two mode of
communication today, second only to telephone usage. Thirty-seven percent
of Gallup Poll respondents revealed they use the Internet more than 10
hours per week, while all respondents averaged 7-8 hours per week. Ninety
percent of those use the Internet for email at home and another 80% use it for email
at work. The IDC states that the number of email boxes will grow at a rate
of 138% over the next five years, from 505 million in year 2000 to more
than 1.2 billion in 2005.
Although the consumer adoption of email is tremendous, the email market
contributes an ugly by-product to this growth. Consumers are being invaded
by unwanted, unsolicited advertisers using computer-generated email which
clogs the arteries of the Internet and the inboxes of individuals.
Commonly referred to as “spam,” this practice has escalated exponentially,
reaching epidemic proportions and creating significant concern, stress, and
anger among end users.
According to MessageLabs, today more than 30 percent of all email is unsolicited, and it is estimated that
by July 2003 the amount of spam received by users will
surpass the amount of legitimate email. Research firm Jupiter
Media states that the number of unsolicited emails is predicted to
increase from 140 billion messages in 2001 to more than 845 billion in the
next five years. Jupiter also estimates that the average email user will
receive 3,900 junk emails per day in the year 2007.
Spam can take many forms, but a recent study by MessageLabs of consumer
email users revealed that pornography is the number one spam concern
among adults, cited by 77% of respondents. Other high volume spam
producers are the mortgage and loan industry, the investment industry, and the
real estate industry. Additionally, a significant amount of spam is
fraudulent and frightening to consumers.
The MessageLabs study noted that the number of viruses distributed via
spam rose from one in every 380 emails sent during 2001 to one in 212 in
2002. The study also noted that the famed “Nigerian Scam” is on track to
bilk consumers out of nearly $2 billion in 2003. In addition to the hard
costs of spam there are the soft costs of bandwidth usage, lost time, and
other factors that threaten the economic structure of web-based email.
Consumers are increasingly sophisticated in their use of email. Email
attachments are proliferating, due to the sharing of digital photography,
music, and video files. While web-based email services are beginning to
offer additional storage capacity to archive emails and rich media files,
they have not kept pace with the trend toward more and larger email
attachments.
As a result, consumers are stymied in their desire to share larger files.
Web-based email services allow attachments from 1-3 MB, while the typical
MP3 music file requires 3-5 MB of memory. Increasingly, users must
perform cumbersome tasks, such as compression, in order to send the attachments they
want to share with others.
Most individuals use free web-based email services through providers such
as Hotmail, YahooMail, or AOL. These services are loss-leaders for their
parent companies, and consequently, the services offered to customers
suffer from lack of innovation and attention. At the same time, email
services provided to businesses are continually improved with new features
and capabilities. As an example, the vast majority of technology
investments made to eliminate spam have been designed specifically for use
in corporations, with very little interest in solving the problem for
consumers.
Further, there is little resemblance between the feature-rich email
applications offered to business users, replete with extensive
organizational and management capabilities, compared to those web-based
email services offered to consumers. The difference between the two continues
to grow and the consumer experience is suffering as a result.
The Mailblocks Answer
Mailblocks was created to answer the needs of the personal, web-based
email market. Using advanced technology and the ingenuity of its
well regarded engineering team, Mailblocks is a next-generation, personal
email service that consumers crave in today's rapidly changing digital world.
In a nutshell, Mailblocks gives individuals the ability to control their
personal email inbox. With Mailblocks, consumers are able to control what
email is received and how it is organized. Specifically, the Mailblocks
service offers three key benefits:
• Mailblocks eliminates spam.
Architecting the service around a patented
Challenge/Response technology, Mailblocks creates an effective blend of
automated technology and human involvement to eradicate spam. The only
email users see is the email they want.
• Mailblocks feels like an always-on desktop application.
Mailblocks gives
users the benefits of web-based email, accessible from any browser, but
with the responsiveness, speed, and capabilities found in desktop
applications.
• Mailblocks gives consumers the features they want.
Users can send larger
photo or music attachments, archive more email, create email aliases for
online purchases and subscriptions, integrate their YahooMail and Hotmail
email accounts, and use Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Eudora on top
of the Mailblocks service.
Installation and Setup
If you plan to use Mailblocks as your sole e-mail system, setup is a
breeze. Just click the sign-up link on the Mailblocks site, fill out a
screen of information, hand over your $9.95, and you are ready to set
it up.
To use Mailblocks to filter mail from other existing e-mail accounts, you
have to sign in on the Mailblocks Web site, click the Options tab, select
External Accounts, then enter your username, password, and server
information (for POP3 accounts). Mailblocks is designed to work with AOL,
MSN, Yahoo, and EarthLink mail accounts.
After you add an external account, you will want to import your address book
in order for Mailblocks to add your contacts to your Whitelist, which is
the Accept
Mail list. If you are adding a Web-based account, such as Yahoo or MSN,
this is as easy as clicking on "Import Addresses From Contacts," and they
are automatically added. If you want to add contacts from a POP3 account,
such as EarthLink, you must type in the addresses yourself.
You can also send e-mail to everyone in your address book so Mailblocks
will automatically add everyone in the To: field to your Whitelist. This can be a bit tedious if you have a lot of contacts. Mailblocks is
working on an automated way to add contacts from Outlook and Outlook
Express.
Operationally, the Mailblocks interface looks like a standard Web mail
client, such as YahooMail or Hotmail, with an in-box and several folders,
including Deleted Items, Drafts, Sent Items, and Pending, where the
service stashes challenged mail while it waits for responses. To
check your mail, just click a button and wait a few moments.
At first, nearly all your messages will go into the Pending folder.
However, Mailblocks will not tell you when there is new mail in the
Pending folder. You could have hundreds of messages in there and not know
it until you remember to check. This is one of several odd design
decisions that are being addressed in ongoing upgrades and improvements to
the program.
Targeted Customers
Without a doubt, anyone with any degree of computer interest and use of
email today should
seriously consider investing in this super new service.
Yes, you can
consider adding another utility to help protect your email inbox, but
many times these utilities come at a much higher price than the Mailblocks
service and they also require user intervention and management. With Mailblocks, you
are in effect paying for this to be done for you. This makes it easier for customers to set up their Mailblocks service and let it serve as
their email filtering, rather than having to figure out the many times
complicated filtering algorithms that define other email spam blocker
programs.
Also, any AOLers and Hotmailers should make it a point to consider
Mailblocks. Because there are so many AOLers and Hotmailers sending and
receiving email, this makes them a prime target for the huge number of
automated email spam programs that send millions of unwanted messages to
this large group of customers each day.
As anyone with any degree of experience with computer software knows, just
about all new computer applications begin with great expectations, while
continuously
being upgraded and improved over the years. This seems to be
the case with Mailblocks. While the program definitely has a lot going for
it, super users of email who have tons contacts and need to daily send
and receive hundreds of email messages might want to
consider various of the other add-on email spam blocker utilities now on
the market.
In my opinion, Mailblocks is really designed for typical home
users of email, who may not be so heavily invested in and dependent on
email as in a business or corporate environment.
Price
$9.95 per year for standard service
That's right. You read this right. The standard services is only $9.95 per
year, and this price includes 12MB of storage and a 6MB attachment
allowance. With the many "free," or "reduced-price" email services now on the
market, you don't get as much storage space or attachment size as you get
with the Mailblocks service.
Promotional Launch Offer: Buy one year of service for $9.95 and receive an
extra two years of service for free. That’s just 28 cents per month to rid
your life of spam.
$24.95 per year for expanded service
The expanded service includes 50MB of storage and a 6MB attachment
allowance. The promotion
is not offered for the expanded service.
Can I upgrade later? Sure.
Mailblocks customers who purchase the standard service under the
promotional offer can upgrade to the expanded service anytime within
the first 3 years of service for an additional $15.00. Your new renewal
date will be one year from the date of the upgrade. The subsequent annual
cost for this level of service will then take effect (currently $24.95 per
year).
When you consider what you would pay if you separately purchased any of
today's email spam blocker programs, you can see how valuable is the Mailblocks pricing structure. Also, if you think paying for 2 years of
such a dynamic service as this seems unnecessary, you can also see why the
company offers their service one year at a time. With the expected ongoing
work by the company to continue to upgrade their service, as spammers work
to crack their system, you might also want to consider the one year subscription.
Kudos to Mailblocks
All computer owners owe a great deal of thanks to Mailblocks for their
ingenious, innovative approach to helping us get rid of unwanted email.
The hard work behind the scenes to design this service to be so easy to
use for users is also very impressive, and represents state-of-the-art
sophistication with Web site coding and structure.
Anyone interested in putting a halt to their unwanted email now has about
as easy a way to do this as is possible.
So, it's a tip of the hat to all the very impressive folks with Mailblocks
who are providing this important service.
About Mailblocks, Inc.
Mailblocks, Inc., founded by WebTV co-founder and former Microsoft
executive Phil Goldman, was started with a simple idea: improve the
consumer email experience; make it faster, more manageable and — above all
else — free from the aggravation of spam (unsolicited, computer-generated
email).
Using state-of-the-art technology, an assemblage of talented, zealous and
experienced individuals, and a customer research-driven development model,
Mailblocks has created a new web-based personal email service. It was
designed from the ground up to give consumers the features they want, and
the feel of a desktop application, without the spam they loathe.
Common to every Mailblocks employee is a burning desire to create the
world’s best personal email service. The Mailblocks team possesses
extensive knowledge and experience with online services, subscriptions,
software design and information management.
Mailblocks has assembled a talented group of proven business and market
builders. The executive staff is driven by a passion to make technology
work for people rather than people having to work at technology.
• Phil Goldman, Founder and CEO (formerly of Microsoft, co-founder of
WebTV)
• Rich Landsman, VP Engineering (formerly of iUniverse)
• Susan Bratton, VP Sales & Marketing (formerly of Excite@Home)
• Phil Steffora, VP Technical Operations (formerly of MFN and AltaVista)
To help drive Mailblocks’s vision, the extensive business experience,
consumer knowledge, technology expertise, and raw creativity of a truly
unique group of Silicon Valley leaders has been assembled:
• Andy Hertzfeld, Software Artist, Macintosh Forefather
• Rocky Pimentel, Partner, Redpoint Ventures
• Richard Scudellari, Partner, Morrison & Foerster, LLP
• Bill Yundt, VP Network Operations, WebTV (retired)
Mailblocks, founded in 2002, is a self-funded, privately held corporation.
Contact Information
Jennifer Edsell
Krause-Taylor Associates
408-918-9085
jennifer@krause-taylor.com
Mailblocks, Inc.
201 Main Street, Suite 100
Los Altos, California, 94022
650-947-9361
FAX 650-947-9382
support@mailblocks.com
marketing@mailblocks.com
pr@mailblocks.com
www.mailblocks.com
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Mailblocks