Spammers dealt a blow
By MIKE BERMAN
Scripps Howard News Service
June 11, 2003

Those nasty spammers who insist on cluttering our email inboxes with tons of unwanted tripe have been dealt a crippling blow as the war against them intensifies.

The folks at Earthlink are providing their subscribers with an industrial strength spam killer that zaps those unwanted messages, sending them to junk mail hell, where they remain for eternity.

Of course to take advantage of Earthlink's new feature, you have to be using them as your Internet service provider or be a paying customer for their webmail service, but that's a small price to pay for the complete - and utter destruction - of those annoying messages that plague us every day.

Here's how it works.

Each email sent to those of us with Earthlink email addresses is checked against an address book that you can set up online. If the "suspect" email address isn't listed, the message is routed to a Suspected Spam folder, not being allowed access to Earthlink webmail's inbox, where all messages go before being accessed by Eudora, Outlook or any other program designed to download email to your desktop.

Senders of those messages then receive an email from Earthlink asking them to confirm their email addresses so they can be added to the address book. If they comply, you receive a message saying these people want to be added to the list and you have the option of allowing or denying them access. Since most spammers using mailing services or other devices to mask their addresses never reply, only "legitimate" messages are sent on their merry way to your inbox.

It's also a good idea to check the Suspected Spam folder periodically - say once a day - for messages that don't belong there. The program allows you to select these messages and will automatically add the senders to the address book and forward the messages to your inbox. You can also ask Earthlink to send you a list of all the mail it has quarantined during the past 24 hours.

Earthlink also maintains a list of known spammers, sending those messages to a separate folder where they wither and die without you ever seeing them - unless you want to.

But has Earthlink gone too far? By erecting this email fortress, has it created a monster that will become a major annoyance to those of us that don't send spam?

I don't think so. Legitimizing your email is an easy process and a minor inconvenience that, unfortunately, has become necessary in our effort to keep unwanted junk out of our mailboxes. Now, if they could only find a way to develop a similar product to ban annoying messages sent to us by fax or through the U.S. Postal Service, we would be truly free.

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