Stopping Spam Before It Is Sent

Most anti-spam software can block spam after it is sent. Signal Trading has developed a software product that prevents spam from being sent in the first place.

Signal Trading announced today the release of UseBestMail 1.0.3, a software system that prevents spam from being sent as well as from being received. The company's objective was to produce a real solution to the spam problem: spam prevention rather than just spam blocking. According to the company's founder, Martel Firing, UseBestMail does just that.

Successful spammers rely on their ability to send out large quantities of email – hundreds, thousands, even millions of messages quickly at virtually no cost. With response rates of less than one-percent the spammer can and does make money. (Yes, people do buy things from spam emails.) Small response rates make huge mailings mandatory for a profitable spam campaign, and spammers have a lot of tools at their disposal to accomplish this. Thus, spam is very profitable and therefore virtually impossible to stop, given an open and virtually free email system.

This openness and low cost is perhaps the most appreciated feature of email, and users would be loath to give it up. But suppose one could make the internet email system more expensive and restricted, but only for spammers. For everyone else it would remain as-is. That's the principle behind UseBestMail.

The UseBestMail system provides a way for its users to correspond safely. Each outgoing email is certified, and each incoming email is validated. It is free of charge, unrestricted and fast for small volume mailers. But the spammers can't UseBestMail because it rejects large-scale mailings through a simple, but very effective mechanism.

UseBestMail issues the necessary certifications to all comers at no cost, but it counts the frequency of requests. As the number and frequency of certification requests increases, a time delay is imposed before each new request is granted. The time delay increases with increasing volume. So, for example, if you send out one email, the delay before you can send the next one will be one second. If you send out 100 emails the delay between emails will have increased to 5 seconds, and to send 1,000 the elapsed time will be hours and the delay will be several minutes per message.

It could take days or even weeks for a spammer to send a message that normally takes only a few minutes or hours, so the high-volume requirement of the spammer economic model cannot be met. This virtually guarantees that all mail received through the UseBestMail system is certified spam-free. The more people join the UseBestMail spam-free channel, the fewer potential customers spammers have. Eventually spammers will have no one left to harass, and the world will be free of spam.

UseBestMail, unlike some other methods, does not handle the mail itself, so it is completely confidential, very efficient and expandable. The mail is transmitted over normal email infrastructure, but after validating the received emails the UseBestMail client software knows what is UseBestMail and what is not.

In addition to providing user level software, the company has enterprise level server software available and provisions for efficiently handling legitimate mass mailings such as brokerage statements, purchase confirmations and newsletters.

Like any new technology there is a chicken and egg aspect to this one. Firing explains it this way:

Suppose you had two completely separate mail systems or channels to choose from. There would be the Sewer Channel, which is the present system, and then there would be the Spam-Free Channel, through which no spam could flow. Through which of these two systems would you choose to send and receive your emails? Of course you'd choose the Spam-Free Channel, wouldn't you?

But suppose not everyone would or could convert all at once. You'd need a way to bridge the systems temporarily using the best technology available. If, while you convince people to use the Spam-Free Channel, you could still retrieve good mail from the Sewer System while blocking the spam, you'd probably do that too.

And if the two systems could coexist without any infrastructure changes or costs whatsoever, why wouldn't the world convert —as rapidly as possible — over to the Spam-Free Channel, evantually abandoning the Sewer System to the spammers, virus pushers, and criminals?

So recognizing that it will take a while for UseBestMail to become a universal gated community, Signal Trading has also built into UseBestMail the ability to block spam the old-fashioned way, with a combination of whitelist, challenge/response and preview technology, making it a completely ready-to-go anti-spam package with the potential to rid the world of spam forever.