The Bottom Line
Mailblocks is a great email service with a fast and easy to use Web interface and an effective approach to canning spam. Unfortunately, Mailblocks doesn't integrate secure, encrypted messaging. Mailblocks has been purchased by AOL and is not currently available.
Pros
- Mailblocks has a fast, powerful and easy to use Web interface
- Effective spam blocking using challenge/response and disposable email addresses
- Mailblocks offers IMAP access
Cons
- Mailblocks lacks filters, secure messaging
- Free version lacks IMAP access and POP account collection
- Spammers using authorized address get through
Description
- Mailblocks is an email service offering various service plans, from free to premium.
- Trough a clean, fast and easy to use Web interface, Mailblocks is universally accessible.
- Mailblocks accepts mail only from authorized senders or at one of fifteen disposable addresses.
- You can authorize senders manually, or they do it themselves by replying to a challenging message.
- Authorization is global for all Mailblocks users so long as the sender doesn't send spam.
- Mail sent to disposable Mailblocks addresses (given to shops, newsletters,...) always gets through.
- It's easy to disable a disposable alias, though, trashing all mail sent to it automatically.
- Mailblocks includes an address book and offers message filters to flag and file mail automatically.
- You can check external POP, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, and MSN accounts in Mailblocks.
- Mailblocks' rich text editor requires Windows IE 5/6.
Guide Review - Mailblocks - Spam Filtering Service
Most web-based email accounts are notoriously filled with spam. Mailblocks is a web-based email service (though not exclusively, the for-fee plans net you IMAP access as well), but it applies two effective techniques to ban spam.
On the one hand, only mail from authorized senders is allowed entry to your Mailblocks Inbox. New senders get a challenging message (when they reply to the challenge, this sensibly authorizes them for all Mailblocks users), or you authorize them manually.
In the other hand, you hold a bunch (a reasonable 15) disposable email addresses, which can be disabled at will if they receive spam.
While the Mailblocks web interface is slick, fast and offers basic, useful filtering, it still lacks some features: Mailblocks doesn't incorporate secure messaging (using either S/MIME or OpenPGP) and the message editor can't quote text properly in replies.
