Actually Dave, it makes a lot of sense.
I'll give you the simple version of how it would work:
First the program would ask you to create a list of acceptable email contacts. Select all (?) from your address book for instance.
Then give them the means to also edit and add/remove email addresses from this list via a search capability.
Aunt Judys finally got email? Add a temp rule that says accept all emails with "judy" in the address.
Secondly log all incoming email addresses. You don't have to look at it, but it would be there to review in case someone told you that they had sent you an email and it was rejected. It would allow an easy manner,(via search) to find that persons email address and then add it to your list. Simple.
What you would end up with is no spam except those that have gotten through due to faking a prior accepted email address. And this, in time could be corrected with email validation certificates (SSL).
Bought something from Amazon? You could search for "amazon" and add it to your list of approved senders. Or, use the rule that allows all email addresses containing "amazon" in the sending address. Then after you determine the exact positive match remove the looser rule. this would also allow you an easy manner in which to get emails from merchants you deal with. Buy a new iPod from the Apple Store. Add a rule that accepts email containing apple.com.
Not much work on the user end and the difference between all the crap they are getting now would well be worth the small efforts of maintaining their personal list.
Regarding the Junk mail folder, you don't do this already? Why would you knowingly mix good email into a folder that contains all your spam mail, when you could easily prescreen and send known "friendlies" to a specific location? This also makes it easy to quickly scan and delete obvious spam as you know none of your current client emails will be intermixed.
It will be interesting to see how the big boys (AOL/Earthlink) sort out the problems that you guys have identified.
Regards,
Steve Guluk SGDesign (949) 661-9333 ICQ: 7230769
On Feb 22, 2005, at 2:53 PM, David Riddle wrote:
Log all the incoming addresses and allow client to search and add from
the list. Or even allow them a manual addition which could then be
found at the stores web site. The only other thing to overcome would be
people faking the senders email address. Even that could be overcome
with some form of secure ID from the likes of Amazon or BofA etc.
The "address" logging feature makes ZERO sense in the same way that a "Junk" mail folder doesn't make any sense either.
1. People are TIRED of getting junk mail.
2. With Junk mail folders they are digging through the folder to see if they got any "false positives". Since they are looking through their already why not save the hassle and jsut delete them from your in-box?
3. With a list of "logged" email addresses the user will have to look down through that list of email addresses and try to determine which ones got caught that they wanted to get through and then approve them?
How often shoudl they do this? How often will they actually do this? It is one thing for an Mail admin who does this everyday (multiple times per day) to do it and something else entirely to expect end users to do it regularaly. Heck they have a difficult enough time just keeping their "automated" anti-virus software current.
________________________________________________________________ Sent via the WebMail system at microworks.net
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
