Mailblocks about to cease operation
October 15, 2005 by Mike Wendland
I openly worried about this happening a year or so ago when America Online bought Mailblocks, an opt-in spam filtering service that did a great job.
Did is what I worried I’d be saying back at the time of the purchase and, sure enough, Mailblocks is now sending its customers notices that, as of Nov. 16, it will cease operations and all accounts will be closed and the data permanently deleted.
The note says Mailblocks is being replaced by AOL’s new web-based AIM Mail service, which is “based on the Mailblocks technology” - but it doesn’t explain whether there’s a similar opt-in feature to the one Mailblocks did so well.
AIM Mail works with the user’s AOL screen name. If you don’t already have an AOL account, you can get a free AOL mail account by registering.
I logged in and looked around but don’t see an easy way to filter a bunch of my other e-mail accounts through it like I did with Mailblocks.
Bummer. I really liked Mailblocks. It’s sad to see it go.
http://www.spamcop.net works for me, it can do multiple e-mail accounts. It stops like 99% of spam, very seldom does it snag a legit e-mail. Then you can also report all those spams and help keep the blocking up to date.
You’re absolutely right about Mailblocks having been a *great* system.
I can now confirm that you’re also absolutely right that the putative replacement, in the form of a free AIM Web mail account, is nowhere near as good. Most specifically, the Mailblocks challenge-response method of blocking spam is not available in an AIM Web mail account; will it ever be?
Yet again, some MBAs (I’ll leave it others to decide what the “A” stands for) have decided to “improve” things by acquiring a very good service, then removing virtually all of its unique and useful functionality.
Thanks for the tip about Spamcop. However, their web site really sucks. Tried to pay using their website and when I got to the end, it said click on the “pay” button but there wasn’t any. Send the check by mail but it puzzles me how they are going to notify me that I have an e-mail address if I don’t have one yet. I’m willing to go through this aggravation because I avoid AOL like the plague. Once I tried to remove their software and it screwed up my operating system. Spamcop could not possibly be worse.