Updates

A while ago we modified our regular SpamDrain subscription slightly. You may now filter up to five addresses in a SpamDrain account (for only €9.99 or $14.99 / year and address) compared to single address filtering as before. This simplifies for all of you beloved customers who want to filter a couple of extra addresses since you do not need to manage separate logins to different SpamDrain accounts but may instead handle all filtering with one login to our site and iPhone and Android apps.

As before you may also choose SpamDrain+. With SpamDrain+ you may add multiple users, filter domains and utilize our personal support. For more info please visit http://spamdrain.net/en/spamdrain-plus

By the way…talking about our apps – we will shortly update our iPhone app so you can view filtering status for all your addresses and update your filtering settings. Stay tuned.

Today we have some good news for all our customers who filter their domain through SpamDrain. You will now be able to manage aliases to filtered addresses directly on the web. There is no extra cost for adding aliases but they must be mapped to one or several filtered addresses. You can also have aliases from one domain pointing to addresses in another one .

We have also improved domain handling so it should be easier to add and manage your domain filtering. You can now also search for both filtered addresses and aliases in the domains page. This feature is also available in the users page.

Please note that all changes made to the domain filtering will take up to five minutes before they propagate to all servers.

Today we have made it easier for you to share SpamDrain and for you to get something out of it. Well, you probably already know that if everyone was using a great spam filter, sending spam wouldn’t pay off and the internet would be a much better and happier place. Help us making the world spam free by inviting your friends and colleagues to join SpamDrain and we will reward you with free months.

We have added a new Sharing page  where you can send invites or share SpamDrain in your social networks, blogs, web pages etc. Simply Log in to your SpamDrain account and hit the Share icon in the upper right corner.

For every paying new filtered address you generate, we will add extra months to your subscription – depending on how many addresses you currently filter. For example, if you filter one address today, you will receive three free months for every new paying filtered address you generate. If you filter two addresses you will receive 1.5 free months for every new filtered address.

The more addresses your friends filter the more free months you receive. Isn’t that great?

If you are generating great volumes you will have the opportunity to join our reseller program instead and start earning real money.

So, start sharing today and make the world a bit more spam free.

Other new features in this update

• Messages that you have retrieved from the archive can now be displayed and re-delivered.
• Clearer indication when a message is blocked due to blacklisted sender.
• Remove entries from blacklist.
• You may now extend your subscription even when there is more than a year left.

For some time we have working on a new type of filter which blocks newsletters and marketing emails. We have being testing it for a while we are really happy with the progress. So today we tell you a little bit more about how it works. Really soon we will enable new functionality in our iPhone, Android and web apps, enabling you to control this filter. (We actually updated our web site today already)

First, some background. As you know you can report spam that SpamDrain has failed to block. This is done in our mobile apps or by logging on to our web site. We have noticed that different users have different definitions of spam. The most obvious definition might be “spam is everything I don’t want in my inbox” (even messages you have accepted to receive but don’t take the time to unsubscribe to). However, there is a problem with this definition. Some people want coupon offers from their local store and some do not want them. With viagra mail it’s much simpler – nobody wants that crap.

We have therefore chosen to introduce this new filter which identifies newsletters and marketing emails and put them in your Archive marked as “Newsletters”. These emails are always listed in your daily/weekly/monthly SpamDrain report so you never have to worry about missing important offers. Of course, you will be able to retrieve/release these blocked message as usual. When retrieving blocked messages from the Archive, SpamDrain will learn not to block similar messages again. You can also turn this filter entirely off.

To train our filters to become even more efficient, we appreciate if you our users could give us a little help when retrieving a message: You will now be asked to classify the message. By helping us deciding why you are retrieving a specific message you will help improving the overall filtering accuracy. The choice you will be given is:

You will get the same question when retrieving a message in the mobile apps.

We hope you will like these improvements – and hey, if you don’t – you can always turn the newsletter filter off. We hope you will enjoy receiving even less spam in the future. Please let us know what you think about these updates.

Please let us know what you think about these updates.

More for more information about the newsletter filter and retrieval of messages from the Archive.

We have now officially launched our new prices for SpamDrain+. Enjoy the new lower prices at http://spamdrain.net/en/prices.

Yesterday we made some updates which hopefully will continue to improve the experience of SpamDrain. We added the possibility to report or retrieve directly in the message lists (Archive and Report), so you do not need to click the message in order to report it. The Report button appears once you hover over the row. Note that you will not need to confirm the reporting so before you click, be sure you really wish to report it as spam.

We also added the hover feature in other lists, so actions appears once you move your mouse over the row. In the filtered address lists, for example, you will now see the Delete icon and the new Pause icon when moving the mouse over the row. Pause filtering is a new feature we have added to give you more control over your SpamDrain account.

Clicking the Pause button will pause the filtering for this address. Once paused, SpamDrain will stop accessing your e-mail account. If you are using domain filtering, SpamDrain will simply let everything through for the paused address.

Once paused, a Play icon is displayed instead which once clicked will start the filtering again.

This pause feature is useful if you have problem with your e-mail access and want to see if SpamDrain is locking your mailbox or if you simply wish to go back to the good old times when tons of spam reached your inbox

We have also made some minor improvements in the login and sign up user interface.

The next few weeks we will continue working with minor improvements and adding help documentation where needed.

Feel free to comment the changes we made recently. Your opinion is the most valuable we have!

The last couple of months we have been working on improving the webapp. The goal has been to make it easier to get started with SpamDrain and making it even more easier to use than before.

Today we finally made the first step launching the a new SpamDrain. We will be making quite a few more improvements the coming months. Please feel free to give us feedback!

With the release today, we also introduce two levels of SpamDrain: SpamDrain and SpamDrain+. Please read more on our website:

spamdrain.net

We are currently performing a major update of the SpamDrain web. Please stay tunes for everything to fall in place.

We are proud to announce that SpamDrain for Android 1.1 now is available in Market. Go to Market and search for spamdrain in your phone or simply wait for the automatic notification in Android.
With this new version you will now be able to access your filtered messages.

New features in 1.1:

• View archive which contains blocked messages.
• Deliver blocked messages to inbox.
• View filtered but not blocked messages.
• Report missed spam.
• Better support for different screen sizes.

What are you waiting for – go to Market and upgrade!

Feel free to rate us and write an excellent review.
If you find a bug, tell us instead and we will fix it .

Some screen shots:

Last weekend we moved the domains www.spamdrain.net, pop.spamdrain.net and imap.spamdrain.net to our new servers. This means that we’re now almost completely running on the new infrastructure we first wrote about back in March. It’s taken a bit longer than we expected back then but now we’re almost there.

The only thing remaining now is to move the services providing filtering for our domain filtering customers. We will do this during the coming months and we hope this will be completed by the end of the summer. Most of you who use the domain filtering service won’t have to do anything and won’t notice. No need to change your MX records.

If you have set up your firewall as recommended in our FAQ you will only have to make sure to update the rules so that it doesn’t block the IP addresses used by our new servers. Please make sure your firewall has been configured to accept all traffic on port 25 (or the port used by your mail server) from the following IP addresses:

85.24.138.228
85.24.138.229
85.24.138.129
62.75.203.192 - 62.75.203.223 (62.75.203.192/27)

You can read more about how to configure your firewall in our FAQ (log in required).

Lately we’ve been working on a new front page along with new pages describing the SpamDrain service. Our goal is to give you as a visitor a quick overview of the service and its benefits. Continue reading “Fresh spam statistics – now on the front page” »

Recently we have worked a lot with speeding up the Archive and Report pages on the web site. These pages should now be a lot more responsive than they used to be.

We have added the possibility for SpamDrain users to turn off the DNS blacklist filter which currently blocks messages sent from known spam servers. Why would you want to do that, you might wonder? (…or you just wonder What is DNS blacklisting ). Continue reading “DNS blacklisting can now be turned off” »

SpamDrain lanserar nu webbmejlfiltrering av POP3- och IMAP-konton. Det innebär att användaren får spam- och virusfiltrering även i sin vanliga webbmejl. Man behöver inte byta webbmejl utan fortsätter att använda sin leverantörs webbmejl precis som vanligt.

Sedan tidigare har SpamDrain-användare som filtrerar hela sin domän redan fått filtrering av webbmejl eftersom SpamDrain då stoppar spam och virus innan de levereras till användarens e-postserver. Om man däremot använder POP3 eller IMAP så sker filtreringen i det ögonblick användaren kopplar upp till SpamDrain via sin dator eller mobil. När man läser sin e-post i webbmejlen har man således inte fått någon filtrering.

Den nya webbmejlfiltreringen innebär att SpamDrain kommer fortsätta filtrera användarens mejl med jämna mellanrum även då användaren inte kopplar upp sig till SpamDrain. SpamDrain ställer själv automatiskt in intervallet beroende på om användaren själv ligger och hämtar sin e-post.

Typiskt är att man kontinuerligt kontrollerar sin e-post på kontorstid. Då finns det ingen anledning för SpamDrain att i bakgrunden filtrera mejlen. Det SpamDrain istället gör är att känna av att användaren inte hämtat sin mejl på ett tag och påbörjar då bakgrundsfiltreringen.

Användaren behöver fortfarande inte uppge något lösenord till sitt e-postkonto på SpamDrains sajt. Istället sparas lösenordet automatiskt första gången användaren hämtar sin e-post via sitt e-postprogram. Lösenordet krypteras och lagras säkert hos SpamDrain. Om användaren byter lösenord på sitt konto kommer SpamDrain automatiskt att uppdatera det lagrade lösenordet nästa gång inloggning sker med e-postprogrammet.

Användaren väljer själv om man vill aktivera webbmejlfiltrering eller inte. När man skapar ett nytt konto kommer det vara ifyllt som standard, men befintliga användare måste själva gå in och aktivera funktionen.

Användaren kan fortfarande använda sitt vanliga e-postprogram tillsammans med webbmejlfiltreringen. SpamDrain kommer då se till att “vanliga” inloggningar till servern inte blockeras och automatiskt öka intervallet om SpamDrain märker att användaren redan ligger och kontrollerar sina mejl kontinuerligt.

När exempelvis användaren lämnar kontoret eller stänger av sitt e-postprogram kommer SpamDrain märka att man inte loggat in på ett tag och därefter automatiskt börja filtrera e-posten i bakgrunden.

Webbmejlfiltreringen är ett naturligt steg för att våra användare ska få lugn och ro i alla inkorgar de använder.

Enligt en undersökning från Halon Security kostar sex-spam företaget 120 kr per månad och anställd i förlorad arbetstid. Lägg därtill alla andra spam och eventuella virus och trojaner som kan komma in till följd av för mycket skräppost. Även om man ska ta sådana här studier med en stor nypa salt (!) så kan man inte låta bli att räkna fram vad en typisk SpamDrain-kund sparar genom att använda SpamDrain:

Ett företag med 10 e-postkonto som filtreras av SpamDrain kostar 1 870 kr/år. Enligt Halon Security skulle det kostat företaget 120 kr x 12 mån x 10 anställda = 14 400 kr/år. Med SpamDrain sparar alltså ett företag med 10 avändare 12 530 kr/år. Ett resultat att ta med en gnutta salt . Förmodligen sparar man betydligt mer än så pga produktivare personal, mindre driftsproblem etc.

Alla priser exklusive moms.

Läs mer på IDG.

For the past week a massive attack has infected PCs by tricking users into clicking links in fake messages from CNN.com. The attack has shown little sign of ending soon. The links in the spam mails go to sites which tell you to download the Adobe Flash player to watch a movie. What actually happens when you run this file is that a trojan is installed on your computer. The trojan adds your computer to a worldwide Botnet.

The email itself looks like a completely normal message from CNN.com and some of the links in the email also go to CNN. Right now there is a similar attack in progress, although this time MSNBC.com (NBC’s and MSN’s news site) is used to mask the attack. Spam has flowed in since around 11am on Tuesday. The sites, which the spam messages link to, are most likely hijacked ones and the site owners are probably not yet aware that their sites contain malicious code.

Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 now include filters to block sites like these. However, it normally takes several days before a hijacked site has been reported to these filters. Until then, no warning will be displayed when surfing to these sites.

You can now log in to your personal pages and view statistics for your subscription. Currently there are charts displaying the amount of filtered spam, viruses and regular messages as well as the percentage of all spam SpamDrain has been able to catch for your accounts. The charts display statistics for the last week, the four last weeks and the last 6 months. Continue reading “SpamDrain displays spam statistics for your subscription” »

Nu kan du se statistik över mail som filtrerats för ditt abonnemang. I dagsläget visas diagram över hur mycket skräppost, virus och riktiga meddelanden som filtrerats samt hur stor andel av alla spam som SpamDrain fångat för ditt abonnemang. Diagrammen visar statistik för den senaste veckan, de fyra senaste veckorna samt för de 6 senaste månaderna. Continue reading “Ny spam-statistik för ditt abonnemang” »

Har du märkt att du nu kan söka bland e-postkonton och användare? Detta gör det enklare att hitta för er medlemmar som har många konton upplagda. Sökningen har vi valt att göra så enkel som möjligt varför du endast har ett textfält att skriva in din sökning i. Själva sökningen sker sedan automatiskt bland användare, e-postadress, användarnamn, servernamn etc. Berätta gärna vad du tycker om detta! Vi har även ändrat e-postkontolistan för att få den mer överskådlig.

Samtidigt med denna förbättring har vi även passat på att rätta till diverse småfel. Vi hanterar numera bounces av meddelande för vår domäntjänster på ett bättre sätt. Nu studsar meddelanden med ogiltig mottagare direkt vid leverans istället för att köas upp på våra servrar.

Vi vill gärna att ni medlemmar fortsätter att komma med synpunkter på förbättringar. På så sätt kan vi fortsätta att leverera en superbra tjänst med klockren filtrering .

The problem with VAT number validation for French VAT numbers are now fixed. All valid French VAT numbers should now be validated correctly.

IDG rapporterar att en plötslig anstormning av asiatisk skräppost fått Sprays mailtjänst att gå på knäna. Även här på SpamDrain har vi de senaste dagarna märkt av en ökning av mängden spam som skickas till våra kunder. Anstormningen har dock inte lett till några problem för tjänsten eller våra kunder. Idag verkar andelen skräppost ha återgått till mer normala nivåer.

Se statistik på SpamDrain Security Center.