Foiling Spam at the Source

February 5th, 2007: The exponential increase in spam is hardly news to anyone these days, however, as the avalanche of unsolicited email gathers force a new company has decided to take a different tact to resolve the problem.

With an average of 6 spam messages for every computer user on earth sent out a day, legislation is looking increasingly impotent as a means to stem the tide. According to SpamSafeSites.com, the definition of ‘spam’ is too grey to make it effective. It says companies get around spam laws by buying ‘opt-in’ lists and using marketing companies to spruik their wares. Others rent their user email lists to marketers who will send them anything because their users have agreed to receive ‘offers from partners’.

SpamSafeSites.com aims to eliminate the grey areas and make everything black and white by evaluating, monitoring and endorsing websites as non-spammers. It’s a simple premise, companies sign up for the service, SpamSafeSites.com evaluates their sites and then endorses them with a no-spam trust seal. From here, if a customer from a trusted company receives something they consider spam, they will be able to safely unsubscribe and be able to contact someone from the company.

While it doesn’t detail how it evaluates sites, the company says that its method helps to reduce spam by creating a trusted network of sites for consumers to entrust their details to, and make it harder for spammers to obtain legitimate email addresses in the first place.

“We hope to combat spam from two ways: First we make it hard for spammers to harvest emails from websites. Second we certify the members do not spam, and encourage surfers to use them over other sites that have not been certified, effectively restricting the flow of email addresses available to the spammers” Said Co- founder of the company, David Cann.

The service also protects members from spam by providing a web based contact form. This means they do not need to publish an email address anywhere on their website and so cannot be found by spammers and email harvesters. Overall, SpamSafeSites.com reckons it gives customers peace of mind they can subscribe to a newsletter without it coming back to haunt them.

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