Tag Archives: e-mail spam

Mailblocks R.I.P.

Mailblocks, the best e-mail web service out there is now shutting down. I’m very sad at this, they used CAPTCHAs to make sure you weren’t getting spam and they made e-mail managment more than bearable. Mailblocks gave you extra addresses that you could use for when you didn’t want mail filtered and would check your other accounts for you and emulated the outgoing address that you wanted people to see.

MailBlocks did it right. Think of them as the iPods of MP3 players, or the TiVo of DVRs, they just went the extra miles. I really can’t figure how I’ll manage my mail as well…

AOL bought them 6-10 months ago and has done nothing with the service. Now they are canceling all accounts (in 30 days). They want you to use AIM Mail which is free but appears to offer none of the main features of MailBlocks!!! I think they might have used the screen interface and that’s it. Yuck!

I will be asking for my refund. I guess it’s time to check out SpamArrest (here’s an animated demo). I’ve mentioned it before as an alternative to MailBlocks (when AOL stopped accepting accounts)so now it’s time to do it.

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Spam Arrest

So people have asked me about my mail filtering. I use Mailblocks but they haven’t been offering anything since AOL bought them. I thought they were supposed to have offered something by now (at least to AIM users) but I haven’t seen anything yet. But I’ve found a similar service called SpamArrest and they’ve got this nice little demo that explains the service (it’s always hard to explain). It looks like they have more storage than Mailblocks (1GB vs. 100MB) but I’m not sure if they automatically authenticate outgoing mail addresses automatically. It’s got a thirty day free trial (I can almost promise you won’t give it up if you get spam) which people won’t even know you switched services (unless you give them one of the spamarrest addresses). Have I ever led you wrong with a technology tip?!?

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