Copyright 2005 Anthony VitaWhy do so many people think I need to take Viagra? I guess it’s for
same reason others believe I want to re-finance my home, invest in a new stock and sell my business.
Like you, I routinely receive more junk emails than legitimate ones. Do I look stupid or do they really think I want latest virus by opening any attachment which accompanies an unsolicited email? Aren’t there laws against spamming and why don’t they work? Perhaps these are questions for other articles. What you need to know now is that I have found a way to keep unwanted emails from ever seeing your inbox.
For past year I have been using a program called “Boxtrapper”. Until this time I had been relying on various spam filters that used keywords or other factors to determine if an email was spam. The success rate for this type of filtering varied as spammers eventually found ways around “formula” being used by filter. For example, word “Valium” may be flagged as a spam indicator while misspelled version, “Va Lium”, would get by unnoticed. This is just one of many examples of how spammers manipulate words to beat filtering. The biggest problem is when spammers “spoof” header information in an email so it’s nearly impossible to trace who sent message. I have even seen instances of people receiving spam emails that appear to have come from themselves!
When you try to beat spammers on this level you quickly find yourself running in circles and sadly realizing this is an ineffective way to guard against every spam email. A friend suggested I try “Boxtrapper” because it had eliminated ALL spam from his inbox. Since I have many email accounts, I decided to try it on my personal address and test its effectiveness. Immediately I could see difference.
The reason “Boxtrapper” is so effective is because of it’s “opt-in” design. Basically, no email can reach you unless sender has confirmed they are legitimate. Once they have been confirmed, their email address is added to a “whitelist”. I’m sure you’ve heard term “blacklist”, which is used to filter out names. In this case a whitelist is maintained to show who is allowed to email you.
To better understand how “Boxtrapper” works, I will explain what happens when a legitimate email from a friend comes your way. First, when a friend sends you an email, he will automatically receive an email reply (known as an “auto response”). This email will tell him to simply hit his “Reply” button and resend in order to be added to your list of accepted senders. You can fully customize auto response message so it reads exactly how you prefer.
