The Hindu : Instant e-mail address service

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 03, 2003

Business

Business

Instant e-mail address service

THIS WEEK we will discuss an innovative e-mail service that helps you fight spam or junk mails.

The e-mail service, considered one of the Net's killer applications, is fast becoming useless for many netizens whose mailboxes are getting flooded with unsolicited junk e-mails. Everyday e-mail users worldwide are cursing the spammers for filling up their mailboxes with useless mails. Of course, as discussed earlier, there are many tools available that can help minimise this menace.

There is, for example, the free anti-spam tool called SpamPal (http://www.spampal.org/), which functions as a POP server proxy in your machine. When you initiate the mail checking process in your mail client, instead of contacting the mail server, it talks to the SpamPal running in your machine.

In response to this request from the mail client, SpamPal contacts the mail server, collects the mails from your mailbox, examines the incoming mails, inserts the text `**SPAM**' into all the mails it regards as spam and hands over all the messages to the mail client.

Using the mail client's filtering feature you can transfer all the mails with the label `**SPAM**' in the `Subject' header to a separate mailbox.

While many spam blockers are available, none can fully eliminate junk mails from the user's mailbox. Another drawback of tools is that they sometimes filter out legitimate mails along with junk mails. This can be more harmful, especially for business organisations, than those caused by junk mails. Hence, along with anti-spam tools, we need to look at some additional means.

For sending a junk mail, the spammer should get your mail address. If you have only one e-mail address and you use it for anything and everything, the chance of your address reaching the hands of spammers increases. That is, the more public your email id, the more spam-prone it will be.

This author gets hundreds of junk mails everyday in his e-mail id published along with this column. But my other e-mail boxes that are used only for personal/professional correspondence, do not get much junk mail. So, one way to protect the mailboxes from the attack of unscrupulous spammers is to keep it invisible to the public.

One possibility of your e-mail address slipping into the public space is when you submit it to an on-line service that requires an e-mail address for signing-up. In many cases, after activating the account, there is no reason for these services to keep your e-mail id. One solution is to create a temporary e-mail id with a free e-mail provider like Hotmail, present it to the on-line service and forget about it. But creating a fresh e-mail id each time you sign-up with an on-line service is a time consuming process that may not be always feasible. What you need in such a situation is an e-mail service that lets you create an e-mail id instantaneously without any signing up process. The free e-mail service, Mailinator (http://www.mailinator.com) is a solution worth a trial in this regard.

Mailinator

Mailinator is an e-mail service that creates on-the-spot e-mail addresses. For this you do not have to visit the site and go through the registration process. Just choose any username and attach the string `@mailinator.com' on to it. For example, suppose you are in the midst of a signing-up process with an on-line service and have reached a stage where you need to provide an e-mail id.

Now, instead of providing your normal e-mail address, create an e-mail id by just typing in some username (say, netspeak) and attaching the string `@mailinator.com' with it (like netspeak@mailinator.com).

Now continue with the registration steps and to finish the process successfully, generally you will have to reply to an e-mail received in this address from the on-line service provider. To retrieve the mail, access the Mailinator site, type the username (here, netspeak) into the box labelled `Check your Mail', click the `Go' button and you will be on your way to read the mail received from the service. The point to note here is that an e-mail sent to Mailinator, as mentioned in its site, will `last only a few hours'.

Thunderbird: An open source mail client

Regular readers of this column may be aware of the powerful web browser from the Mozilla family, Firebird, discussed in this column a few months ago. The people behind Firebird have released a full-fledged mail client called Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/) that can compete with such popular programs as Outlook and Eudora. A major highlight of this cross-platform e-mail client that can be used with Linux and Windows is the built-in spam filter. The junk filter examines all incoming mails, identifies the spam ones and marks it with a `junk' icon. A notable feature of the filter tool is that you can train it and augment its knowledge base on what is spam and what is not.

Belarc PC Advisor

Are you looking for a product that can give details of the various hardware/software components installed in your PC? The free software Belarc Advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html) displays on your browser details of your PC's hardware/software such as system model, controllers, operating system, display hardware, processor and so on and is worth testing.

J. Murali

Email the author at:

murali27@satyam.net.in

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