Boxbe - the spammy anti-spam tool
Boxbe is one of those really appealing ideas that I’ve been wishing for a very long time someone would get right. Boxbe filters incoming mail based on the relationship that you have with the mailer. People who are on the boxbe “guest list” can mail you. People who aren’t are either trapped for you to consider later, or blocked.
Now, I’ve been doing this for some time already with Outlook. I have rules set up that filter mail into a lower priority bucket if the mailer is someone who isn’t in my address book. But the Outlook approach only works in certain circumstances, and doesn’t handle mail from my pop3 and gmail accounts at all. Nevertheless, I’ve found it to be an efficient way to organize email, even with it’s imperfections.
When I received an invitation to try about boxbe this morning, it seemed like my wishes might finally have been answered. However, I can’t recommend it at this point, as I haven’t actually been able to use it yet. The Outlook plug-in will only run on Windows XP (this despite Vista having been in the market for over 18 months now).
And, ironically, the first thing that this anti-spam tool did when I enabled everyone in my address book was… spam my address book.
If you download it, and try it yourself please do let know what your experience is like.
