Mailblocks for SPAM Protection

I have used any number of spam solutions. I receive between 500-1000 spams a day. My Rick@Leaders.net account has been around the internet for a long time, and it is on nearly every spammers list by now.

What I have done is sign up with http://www.mailblocks.com. All my mail to Rick@Leaders.net gets forwarded to their servers. If you write to me, and I don’t know you yet, Mail Blocks replies with a request for you to verify that you are a person and not a machine spamming me. A quick click, enter some numbers, and your message is delivered to me. From that point on, you are authenticated for me (and for any other mailblocks customers who allow my authentication to deliver mail to them).

This has done a couple of things for me. First, I never have to download the spam. It never makes it to my local computer. Second, while I still briefly skim my “pending (mostly spam)” messages, I frankly don’t worry about messages with no or misleading subjects, as most spam is these days. If the person doesn’t go to the minimal effort to confirm that they want the message delivered, well, I don’t worry about not receiving it. AND, if they DID want it to get through, I don’t miss it accidentally amongst 4200 spams.

I also use this for my wife. She was getting some really NASTY stuff all of a sudden. While it was only a couple of spam a week, they were so nasty that they upset her. Now she uses mailblocks, too, and there won’t be any more barnyard activity accidentally popping up in her preview window in outlook.

This is not a totally perfect solution. But it is working GREAT for me. They also offer webmail, of course, so when I am traveling I can focus in on an inbox that does not include thousands of spam messages. This has been a HUGE time saver as well.