Real World Computing
A spam-free mailbox!
On the downside, people now can't contact you at all unless they have an approved keyed address, which means that if your business relies on prospective clients getting in touch unsolicited, you could be in big trouble. ZoEmail attempts to address this shortcoming by way of a user directory that, assuming you've given permission for it so to do, will allow anyone to look up your address and request a temporary key that expires after they've sent two emails. Ignore those two messages and the sender is blocked, reply and they'll get their own unique key. The more observant reader will now have spotted the flaw in this otherwise perfect scenario - in order for a prospective client to get that temporary key, they have to know that you have a ZoEmail account in the first place. Unfortunately, in the real world that you and I inhabit, trying to change the habits of others to suit your needs isn't easy, especially when those habits have anything to do with email usage.
ZoEmail limits attachments to a maximum of 10MB per message, and even its premium service with 50MB of storage looks rather on the skinny side compared to the 1,000MB offered by the new Google Gmail (gmail.google.com) service, and remember that the Gmail storage is cost-free. However, Gmail isn't likely to be an advert-free zone. In fact, as I understand it, it will use targeted ads dependent upon keywords within the email message and certainly isn't intended to be a spam-trapping solution. The main selling point as far as I can tell - and you'll excuse me for being so vague, but as I write the Gmail service is on trial by a privileged few that doesn't include me - is rather unsurprisingly the ability to search any text, within any email, from whatever time. Once Gmail gets released to the great unwashed I'll be sure to get stuck in and report on it here, naturally enough. For now, though, if you want the ultimate in easy-to-use spam-blocking with absolutely no false positives and no chance of any spam getting through then ZoEmail represents good value, if you can live with its limitations in other areas. Me, I'm sticking with Outlook with InBoxer anti-spam, which isn't a 100 per cent solution but 98 per cent isn't bad, and it doesn't stop any potential clients, or you dear reader, from getting in touch. ZoEmail will become my webmail client of choice though, and in that market it stands head and shoulders above the competition already, despite requiring a (relatively small) subscription payment. Let's face it, a spam-busting webmail system isn't going to break your piggy bank at $11.88 (£6.70) per year for the 12MB storage option, and $19.08 (£10.75) per year for 50MB.
Disposable email
Microsoft caused quite a media stir at the start of this year when its idea of self-destructing emails was picked up by the less well-informed end of the tabloid IT press. In fact, the story was really about the Information Rights Management functionality of Office 2003/Exchange 2003, which can restrict access to email rather than destroy it altogether. So when a combination of PC Pro readers and consultancy clients started to ask if I'd heard of the disposable email addresses being offered by Mailinator (www.mailinator.com), I was at first rather sceptical that anything out of the ordinary or even slightly useful might be involved. However, I always at least look at something before aloofly dismissing it, so I wandered over to the website where I was pleasantly surprised to find a simple but highly effective solution to web-harvested spam. You know the drill, you sign up for website access and have to give your email address, which then gets harvested or simply sold on and you end up with the resulting flood of spam. You can't always use a fake address, as many of the websites and forums involved are wise to that and require an emailed password or other response in order to give you access in the first place. If you run your own mail server or have control over a POP box to enable creation and deletion of mailboxes you can always do just that- if you can be bothered, of course. Half the time the amount of work involved outweighs the benefit of the data to be accessed so you just skip it.
