Anti-Spam Email Provider Review - Bluebottle Anti-Spam

Hey everybody, I'm going to start this new blog off with an introduction and a review.


First the introduction - my name is Nathan and I am a nerd. I live on the Internet, and I get a lot of spam. I don't know why the Internet goblins hate me, but I am daily bombarded with ads for Viagra and Cialis, "secret" stock information and letters from Russian brides. It steals time from me in the morning when I get into work and have to clear out piles of rubbish to find the actually important *real* emails that I actually want, and I barely even check my Hotmail account anymore, it is so clogged with crap.


It's enough to drive you insane!


The worst thing, though, is when they are obviously spam and they still aren't picked up by the spam filter. I mean, I don't get many *NON* spam emails that contain only a picture, with a subject line reading "BUY CHEAP VIAGRA AND PLEASE YOUR WOMAN TODAY". That is what really gets me, especially in companies like Live / Hotmail that claim to have "quality anti-spam email filtering programs".


Consequently, I have been looking into finding a new anti-spam email provider to go through, and there has been one standout. I actually found Bluebottle Anti-Spam Email through work, and from what I hear they are one of the best anti-spam systems around. But don't take my word for it, check out their anti-spam software comparison chart to see how they fare against Live and Gmail. I shall now use some of my technological know-how and "Googling skills" to take a look at them in more detail, so hold on tight...


Bluebottle Anti-Spam Email Solution: A Review


According to Bluebottle's "Anti-Spam Protection - 7 Steps to Protecting Your Inbox", they have a range of automated anti-spam tests that each email sent to you goes through before you even see it:


1. First, they have the standard scan for viruses, trojans and worms, though they automatically trash anything with a confirmed virus, rather than tag it and leave it for an unthinking user (read: me when I haven't had my 3pm coffee) to accidentally open.


2,3,4. Then, assuming the email didn't contain something nasty, they run it through "Trusted Delivery Email Authentication", which uses a DNS query to check whether the sender is who the email *says* the sender is (OK, that's a bit of a simplification, but check out "What is Trusted Delivery?" if you want to know the in's and out's of it. Sheesh.), then "DomainKeys Anti-Spam Program" (which is actually not a very good anti-spam program, but in conjunction with the rest I think it is pretty covered), then finally sent to "SpamAssassin", which uses Bayesian filtering and keyword pattern matching to check whether the email contains the common words found in spam emails. If it gets ticks too many boxes, it never makes it to you.

5, 6. Then, assuming any nasty spam emails actually made it this far in the anti-spam process, they are checked against the Bluebottle Blackhole list, a real-time list of spam-sending IP's that they absolutely won't let in, and your personal allowed and blocked lists. If it is on one of the blocked lists, it's gone forever and won't ever make it to you, and if it is on your allowed list (because you have put them on by sending or accepting their emails), then they finally make it to your inbox. Nice!

7. And finally, in step 7 of the awesome Bluebottle anti-spam email system, if they have made it through the previous steps and aren't already on your allowed list, they are sent a verification email to confirm that they are a real person. Spammers normally automate their nefarious acts, so will obviously not open an email and click the email verification link, so their email will never make it to you. Real people, on the other hand, only need to click a link and they will be added to your allowed list forever (at least, until they start spamming you, and then Bluebottle Anti-Spam Police will catch them and ban them from bothering you ever again).

OK, that's it. I think I've definitely convinced myself to go with them, now. One of the best things about these guys is that their anti-spam software isn't just limited to the Internet like Gmail or Live. You don't need to log on to their site to access or emails at all, because you can set up a POP3 account and access it through Outlook. Check out Bluebottle's Anti-Spam Email Features page for all the details on how this works, because I really can't be bothered telling you now. I've got an email to set up.

-- Nate