Spam 'n Virus Blast It!

Tech Note

A flat refusal (AKA "bounce") is far better than a graphic challenge system that replies to all spam by asking the sender to do something to prove that it's human. Why?

Replies only add to the spam problem -- if everyone did it, the spam volume would double overnight. One reply for every spam. Bad.

Worse, if you send enough of those replies to forgeries that come from hotmail.com, for example, Hotmail itself may consider you to be an irresponsible mail sender (or worse, a spammer!). Why? Because those replies are real e-mail!

However, when our mail server refuses all that junk mail from Hotmail, it is telling Hotmail's mail server that it is sending out junk and that you don't want it. In other words, you are not responsible. They are.

That is one important way that SVBI! maintains your "e-mail reputation" with the major providers of e-mail services (ex., Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Gmail, etc.).

Two Important Management Tips

TIP #1) You should build your Web site so that you never provide direct e-mail access links on your site -- spambots harvest those and soon you'll be bombarded. Instead, use Form Build It! to build a "Contact Us" form which you add to a Web page. Then provide links to that Web page where necessary. Two advantages...

With a Captcha challenge graphic, only humans can fill in forms, so SVBI! lets those through to you. And it automatically adds submitted e-mail addresses to your Whitelist... no need for you to update the Whitelist manually!

TIP #2) Everyone you know should be on your Whitelist. SVBI! even allows you to create Wormholes to allow "new friends" to get onto your Whitelist.

As you will see, creating your Whitelist requires a one-time-only setup by you. After that, SVBI! manages it automatically, with optional fine-tuning by you.

You will also see that you can turn "Whitelist filtering" off. SVBI! will continue to build and manage a Whitelist, but it will not check the sender's e-mail address against that list if you turn this off. Whenever you are ready to turn it on, merely do your one-time Whitelist creation and you're "good to go!"

More on these tips when you get to the sections where you manage your E-mail Accounts and your Whitelist.

Challenge-Response
As a Last Resort, Not First

This kind of anti-spam system is called a "Challenge-Response" (C-R) system. It's used by some services to protect against spam. And the theory behind it is good...

No spammer uses his own e-mail address as the real "From" address. And no spammer bothers to manually handle his millions of replies and bounce-backs/refusals. (Replies give spammers useful information that the account exists, but bounce-backs/refusals look dead to them -- one more good reason to refuse bad mail.)

Bottom line...

C-R's effectiveness is based upon this fact that only humans would reply to a challenge.

But C-R (as employed by standalone services) has some major drawbacks...

Problem #1) It replies to spam. Think this through -- if some spammer (or saboteur) spams you sufficiently from fake Hotmail addresses and if your C-R replies to those e-mails, Hotmail might eventually consider you to be an irresponsible sender of mail.

Instead, SVBI! simply tells the sending mail server, "Sorry, you're sending us junk and we don't want it -- give it back to your customer who sent this." And SVBI! adds a custom message so that a human reader who really wants to contact you can indeed whitelist himself or herself.

And humans do reply to the C-R system. When you get a bounce-back from someone YOU want to contact, don't you check to see what it says? Yup, and humans do proceed to whitelist, as long as the process is easy and "once-only."

Problem #2) It works in a vacuum, without any other anti-spam systems wrapped around it. Too risky. The correct way to do C-R is at an SMTP (i.e., at a mail-server) level and only within a larger anti-spam program that manages ALL the issues. That is what SVBI! delivers.

Problem #3) What about all the automated replies that you DO want? Subscription confirmation requests from an e-zine you just subscribed to? Post-purchase e-mails? C-R fails miserably because the sending companies (like spammers) may not actually review replies or bounce-backs to their mail -- so no one clicks to confirm the challenge. That's where SVBI!'s "Wormhole E-mail Account" comes in.

A Wormhole Account enables the kind of senders in the preceding paragraph to "wormhole" through SVBI!, directly onto your Whitelist. (More on Wormholes when you reach the E-mail Accounts section.)

Bottom line? SVBI! is the best of all worlds. SVBI! uses "C-R" as a "refusal rifle," not a "reply shotgun"... and only as a last resort.

One more advantage of SVBI!'s type of C-R system...

The "success" page (after someone uses the form at whitelist.sitesell.com to get onto your Whitelist) has a slightly promotional message for Site Build It!. We write a cookie to that visitor. If she later buys SBI!, you'll earn a commission if you're a 5 Pillar Affiliate. If you're not an affiliate, you can join at...

http://affiliates.sitesell.com/

You have nothing to lose, and a commission to gain! (You can also turn this message off.)